


Disappear Here

by foxxing (gayfantasticfour)



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe, Detectives, Dream Sequences, Explicit Sex, Flashbacks, Gore, Graphic Violence, Heavy Angst, Kidnapping, M/M, OCs - Freeform, as in its not sad, but the ending is good, detective!jaebum, mild drinking, murder myster, of sorts, pls heed the violence and gore warning!, reporter!jinyoung, seriously this is like 80 percent angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 00:14:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 70,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7552672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfantasticfour/pseuds/foxxing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homicide detective Im Jaebum's career has been steady and his personal life mostly uneventful, until the morning officer Choi Youngjae wakes him up at 3am and he finds out his childhood best friend and ex-partner has been murdered. He takes the case only to watch everything he's ever known slip through his fingers like sand and to finally figure out that sometimes life is all about finding forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uniform

**Author's Note:**

> so ok wow i'm gonna post the author's note at the end;;;; but 
> 
> so i've been working on this for over half a year now... and it's finally done! it was inspired originally by the detective one-shot au that i wrote and now...we have this 
> 
> i think i tagged everything sorry if i missed something!! 
> 
> the title comes from a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkplhXJgC5I) off [this](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bloc+party+weekend+in+the+city) album as do the titles for the chapter
> 
> i'll keep this part short (for more you can read the author's note at the end) but please remember to heed the graphic violence/gore warning! this is a homicide detective au so... yeah just keep that in mind! also i edited this myself so;; there may be mistakes~
> 
> **But.. In short: I dedicate this to Ines, Nana, Eyena, & Rin. Thanks for being my cheerleaders and always supporting me. I love you!**

_It starts the same way that it always does--he's looking at himself from behind, as though he is a different person, or perhaps a ghost. He watches himself look both ways before crossing the road in a neighborhood that looks achingly familiar, though he can't place where or why he knows it. There are crowds grouped along the edges of the bright yellow police tape encircling the entire front of a house, stretching out past the sidewalk and onto the ground directly next to it. Even as he watches himself approach, he realizes that he should be able to hear the low roar of chatter and the constant shuttering of camera lenses from both the media and the crime scene investigators, but there is none. There isn't even the rush of the wind in his ears, and the police tape snaps silently as he ducks under it. He feels it brush against his back even as he watches it happen. It, too, makes no sound: it feels distinctly like watching the television with the sound off._ _  
_ _  
_ _The dream changes, as if on cue: he is no longer watching himself but is in his own body again. Even in this dream he feels himself trying to tamp down on the discomfort that the utter silence is pressing into him like two hands on his windpipe. He swallows, looking down at the blood splattered in massive, random arcs along the sidewalk leading up to the porch steps. The discomfort grows, his throat closing. It feels too real, too familiar, to be just a dream. He feels as though he's seen this place before in his waking world, been to this house--but that's impossible. It has to be, and he tries to reassure himself even as he begins to mount the steps. Cautiously he avoids the blood pooled in various places on the old, cracking wood. Suddenly, an image of the porch flashes across his mind--there's the small swing on the left, near the corner, potted plants lined up against the railing on the right. And sitting right by the door is the statue of a dog--small, black and white, like a border collie of some sort. He tells himself that this can't be right; he's never been to this place before. His eyes close as he reaches the porch, and when he opens them, his eyes fall immediately upon the dog statue sitting upright with its forepaws bent against its small, ceramic chest. Begging. The painted black eyes stare back at him. Cold horror drips its way down his back like sweat, and the longer he stares into the bottomless black eyes of the dog, the more terrified he becomes. They seem to be holding him there at the top of the stairs, his right hand on the railing and the other tucked into the pocket of his tweed suit pants. He feels as though the dog is trying to tell him something with its pure black eyes, something terrible, something that he needs to know, an unspoken evil--_ _  
_ _  
_ _He is torn from the hypnosis when an officer stumbles out of the house and past him, knocking into his shoulder as she passes. Her face is paper white, hand to her mouth to keep her from vomiting, or screaming, or both. It's not an unusual sight: he's seen plenty of rookie cops lose their lunch on their first crime scene. But the silence of her distress disturbs him, and he looks into a blackness exposed part way by the open door. The same kind of horrible dread curls around his insides as he stares into it; the same bottomless black as the dog statue's eyes. Almost of their own accord, his legs move him toward the open front door. As soon as he crosses the threshold and is enveloped in the near pitch-blackness, he realizes that there's finally sound: a low, constant static noise. It's faint, like listening to a television from another room, but the noise is finally there. It unsettles him in the same way that the darkness of the house and the eyes of the dog unsettled him: it feels...alive._ _  
_ _  
_ _His footsteps make no sound as he wanders through the maze of hallways in the house, going deeper and deeper inside it until he realizes that this should be architecturally impossible: there's too many hallways, too many turns. He has lost himself deep in the heart of a place that does not really exist. The static in his ears grows louder with every turn, as though he's approaching some end, but the thought of it only sends the fear chasing distress down his back again. Cold sweat sticks his black shirt to his back underneath his jacket, and then, all at once, he finds himself at the beginning of a hallway that ends in a door._ _  
_ _  
_ _Fear has him frozen in his tracks. Like the dog's eyes, it, too, feels alive. Sinister. The static noise in his ears is almost deafening. After a few moments of hesitation, he steps forward. Another. Another. Another, until he's halfway down the hallway and is close enough to make out the design of a brass human skull for the doorknob. He feels his mouth drop open in a terrified moan, but even if it makes a sound, it's drowned beneath the static. Another few steps closer to the door and suddenly a BANG cuts through the static and shatters against his ears like glass. It's painfully loud, and he claps his hands over his ears as it comes a second time. BANG. He steps closer to the door, teeth gritted against the agonizing loudness of the static and watches in horror as the door rattles in its frame with each bang on the other side of the dark wood. When he's within arms reach of it, suddenly the banging changes: it begins to quicken, coming quicker and quicker until it's the steady beat of someone's fist against the door. It sounds like drums, it sounds like chanting, it sounds like a thousand discordant voices all screaming directly into his brain. He feels dizzy with the intensity, and his eyes roll in his head until they come to rest on the doorknob. The skull seems to be grinning at him, the black sockets for eyes holding onto him. There's something like a horrible laugh underneath the noise in his head, and he watches in pure, unadulterated terror as blood begins to gush from the empty eyes of the skull. Despite its smallness, the blood pours out of it like two faucets on high blast, and the hallway underneath his feet begins to flood. The banging continues, rhythmic and horrible, and he drops to his knees. The blood gushing from the terrible laughing skull seeps into the legs of his pants, hot and slick like its fresh--_ _  
_  
Jaebum rockets into a sitting position in bed, his heart hammering painfully fast in his chest. He can feel the sweat soaking the sheets underneath him even as he feels it drip down his neck and where it's plastered his hair to his temples. He drags a shaking hand across his forehead, coming away damp. The room is still dark, only a sliver of light from the street outside peeking in through the curtains. It takes him a moment to register the steady BANGBANGBANG of someone pounding on his front door, and for a terrified moment he thinks he's still dreaming, but underneath it he can hear a familiar voice calling for him.  
  
Sighing, he throws the mostly damp blanket off of him and pulls on the pajama pants he'd discarded on the floor earlier that night. He doesn't bother with a shirt, but he snatches his robe off the back of his desk chair as he passes through the living room, pulling it on as he shouts, "alright! Alright!" and throws open the door.  
  
On the other side, Choi Youngjae freezes with one hand halfway to the door and his mouth open on another shout. Sheepishly, he drops drops his hand, and then nervously lifts it back up to readjust the policeman's hat on his head. "Finally," he says, still looking mildly embarrassed. "We've been trying to reach you for two hours."  
  
"Oh. Well," Jaebum looks down at the watch on his right wrist, sighing internally when the analog display reads 03:13 AM. "It's 3  AM, so I was sleeping."  
  
"If by sleeping you mean running a marathon in a sauna, then sure."  
  
Jaebum throws him a look, which Youngjae just ignores. "How's that?"  
  
"You're sweating," Youngjae kindly points out, nodding at Jaebum's hair with his chin. "Profusely. Were you having that nightmare again?"  
  
_Dammit_ . "No."  
  
"You know, you're a great detective because you're a terrible liar."  
  
As much as he cares and respects Youngjae as a police officer (and, more recently, his unofficial partner), he's starting to lose his patience. He leans one shoulder against the door frame. "I don't follow your logic. I lie to criminals all the time."  
  
"I think that's more acting than it is lying."  
  
He rolls his eyes. Youngjae is young, much younger than himself--Jaebum's been on the police force for ten years already, and a detective for the last 6. At 24, he was the youngest detective their precinct had ever seen. Now, at nearly 30, he thinks that Youngjae might beat that record. "Cut to the chase, Choi. Why are you banging on my apartment door this late?"  
  
Any joking demeanor suddenly vanishes from Youngjae's posture, and he clears his throat before straightening up. "They...they found a body."  
  
Jaebum has heard this statement so many times as head homicide detective that, at this point, he is relatively immune to it. "This couldn't have waited until the morning?"  
  
He feels bad for being so abrasive when Youngjae turns a little green. It's hard for him to remember that Youngjae is still, by his standards, a rookie: he's only been on the force for two years, and the (sometimes disturbingly brutal) murders that they've investigated thus far still affect him in a way that they don't really affect himself anymore. Softening, he tries again. "I'm sorry. But have they even officially ruled it a murder yet?"  
  
Youngjae, still a little green around the edges, shifts nervously. "Yeah. Stabbing in the park about 4 or 5 miles from here. Looks like a pretty cut and dry mugging, but..." he trails off, looking anxious.  
  
Jaebum prompts him with a rolling motion of his hand. "But...?"  
  
"But he still had everything on him. The only thing missing was any sort of identification."  
  
"He still had his credit cards? Money? Cell phone?"  
  
Nodding, Youngjae reaches up and removes his policeman's cap, nervously flattening down his dark hair. "Yeah. If he had a backpack or anything, that's gone, but we're pretty sure that he didn't. His credit cards are still there, and there's over 600,000 won in his wallet, the crazy thing. But it's still there. Nothing was taken except any hint of his identity. It's a little bizarre."  
  
"Not the most bizarre thing I've ever seen," Jaebum mumbles, and he notices Youngjae's eyes widen but declines to elaborate. "But definitely strange." He opens the door a little more to invite his partner inside. "C'mon. Wait out here while I get dressed."  
  
He leaves Youngjae to have a staring contest with his cat while he pulls on some real clothes. When he pulls out a black button-up shirt from his closet, it hits him how tired he is. This isn't the first time he's been woken up at some ungodly hour of the morning--being in law enforcement for the last ten years, he could probably count on his fingers the amount of times he's gotten real, uninterrupted sleep. Jaebum has been tired for so long that he's surprised he can even recognize the feeling of it. With a sigh, he finishes buttoning the shirt all the way up to the neck before tugging on a nicer pair of dark jeans.  
  
When he emerges ten minutes later, he's surprised to see the cat curled up and sleeping on Youngjae's feet, who is still standing by the door. With a look of panic, Youngjae stage whispers, "Please help me."  
  
It startles a small laugh out of him. Jaebum walks over and leans down to gently pluck Nora from the tops of Youngjae's boots. She meows pitifully, and he hugs her to him for a moment before setting her down on the middle tier of her cat tree. He's had her for years now, and she's really the only thing that keeps him grounded: all the relationships he's tried to have over the years have withered and died after a while, but Nora has always been consistent. In a line of work as dangerous and unpredictable as his, every day is a gamble. He appreciates the consistency of Nora's behavior.  
  
After depositing Nora on her cat tree, he leaves the apartment with Youngjae in tow. He watches as Youngjae tries to take in the lavishness of the hallways at once: the lush carpet, almost silent beneath their feet; the beautiful glass candelabras lighting their way with a soft glow; the almost royal looking wallpaper decorating the lower half of the walls. It's a little "old money" looking, and Jaebum made sure to make the inside of his apartment the complete opposite. On the few occasions he lets someone in, they've joked that it looks like it's straight out of an interior design magazine from 2030: extremely streamlined and modern; a little sparse, but organized and impeccably clean.  
  
Youngjae's low whistle when they get in the elevator surprises him. "I'm always surprised when I remember you live here."  
  
"Why? Don't think I can afford it?"  
  
He laughs, pushing the button for the lobby. "No, not that. It's just so...fancy. You're a man of simple pleasures. It seems, I dunno, opulent. Too much so, for you."  
  
Jaebum pretends to be offended but Youngjae is actually correct: he didn't choose to live in the tallest and most influential apartment complex in the city _because_ it's the biggest and most influential, but just because he can, and it's clean, and best of all, it's quiet. That's what really got him about the place when he was looking at it—the silence. It's far up enough that the noise of the city below is barely a whisper, and the apartments on his floor are so spaced out that he can't even hear his neighbors when they're in the hallways. It's wonderfully isolated, a little distant. It's perfect.  
  
By the time they make it down to the lobby, Jaebum knows something is up. Youngjae fidgets the entire elevator ride, looking at his own reflection in the steel of the door in front of him and not at Jaebum. When they pass by the doorman's desk, normally polite and kind Youngjae hurries right by him without a word. He hovers by the glass front doors while Jaebum talks to the doorman for a moment, nervously taking his policeman's cap off only to put it back on a few seconds later, repeating this a few times before realizing that it looks suspicious. After Jaebum leaves the doorman and ushers Youngjae outside, the younger's nervous chatter fills up the air between them as they head down the steps to the cruiser. Jaebum doesn't ask him what's wrong—he knows that any answer he gets won't be a straight one, and if he doesn't get a straight answer, he knows what'll happen. As easy as it would be, he would never interrogate Youngjae like he would a suspect. Youngjae will either tell him what's going on, or he'll figure it out himself.  
  
They set out in Youngjae's cruiser, and it's only after Jaebum's been staring out the window for twenty minutes that he registers the familiar scenery and where they're headed.  
  
"Oh, come on."  
  
From the corner of his eye he notices Youngjae wince like he'd been found out.  
  
"We're not seriously going to the station, are we?"  
  
Youngjae just sighs, his fingers tightening on the wheel. He doesn't say anything for a moment, studiously avoiding looking over at him. The silence stretches on, and it's a tactic that Jaebum employs on a daily basis: wait 'em out. He just sits quietly in the passenger seat watching the side of the younger's face until finally the silence is too much for Youngjae, and he sighs again. "Sorry. Commissioner's orders."  
  
Jaebum rolls his eyes. "Take me to the scene."  
  
"Jaebum, I really can't. Commissioner Tuan really wants you down at the station first."  
  
He scoffs and crosses his arms. It looks like he's pouting, and he is. As an almost thirty year old man he thinks he maybe should try and break that habit, but some things just won't die.  
  
Including his constant butting of heads with their police commissioner.  
  
"I know that he _wants_ me to, but whether or not I actually show up is a different story."  
  
"Why can't you just do what he says? Just this once." Youngjae's voice is strained like he's trying not to raise it. It sort of sounds like he's a kid stuck in between two divorced parents, and the thought makes him snort derivatively.  
  
"If I always did what Mark wants me to, we'd never solve any murders."  
  
"That's not true, and you shouldn't say things like that." Youngjae, his junior by a chunk of years, griping on him like the kid's his mother. Jaebum mumbles under his breath but doesn't answer, turning away to look out the window while Youngjae pulls into the station's parking lot. He stays buckled in the passenger seat even as his partner parks and gets out of the car. In the side mirror Jaebum watches Youngjae hesitate by the back of the cruiser, waiting for him to get out, and rolling his eyes dramatically when he realizes Jaebum hasn't even unbuckled his seatbelt yet.  
  
Youngjae leans against the closed window. "Get out."  
  
His voice is muffled by the glass, but the parking lot is quiet and he says it loudly enough to be understood. Jaebum just looks at him wiltingly before sighing heavily and unbuckling. He'd rather do anything than be at the station right now, especially when there's still a fresh scene he should be at. With a murder starting off as strange as this one, being at the station to listen Commissioner Mark Tuan talk his ear off about what he shouldn't be doing is the last thing he _should_ be doing.  
  
"I don't like this," he says to Youngjae as they step through the glass doors of the precinct.  
  
One hand reaching up to remove his uniform cap as they make their way down the hallway, Youngjae sighs. "I know."  
  
The carpeted hallway opens up into a large space crowded with desks spaced evenly from each other. At the very back of the room is the Commissioner's office and, like always, the door is wide open. Next to that is his own office, much smaller and more private with the door closed and the shades drawn. From where they're standing, Jaebum can clearly see Commissioner Tuan hunched over his desk with the phone to his ear.  
  
From somewhere in the room, Jaebum hears his name being called. He looks out into the mass of desks, most of them littered with stacks of paper and empty coffee cups. The person calling to him is standing up, uniform slightly disheveled like he's been here for a long time. Glancing around at the other employees, he thinks they have been, too: there's a sluggish quality to the way everyone's speaking on the phones or to each other; a sort of exhausted delirium making the smiles too wide and the laughs too loud. He wonders, then, a little guiltily, how long everyone has been here.  
  
He departs toward the officer calling to him with an elbow in Youngjae's ribs. The blonde patrolman has sat back down, pulling anxiously at the collar of his uniform and barely waiting until Jaebum is within earshot to start talking. "Detective, have they told you anything yet?"  
  
Jaebum looks at his watch, trying to hold back a sigh. Almost 5am now. "No, Officer Choi only came to get me about an hour and a half ago. Brought me straight here."  
  
He waits for a moment, like he's waiting for Jaebum to say something else. When he doesn't, the officer clears his throat and continues. "It's a weird one."  
  
"How so?"  
  
The officer, who Jaebum recognizes as being named Jackson, shuffles through some papers before finding what he's looking for. It's just a notepad with frantically scribbled words on it, and it's crumpled like it had been in someone's pocket for a while.  
  
"First, it wasn't reported until an hour or so later, when an anonymous tip came in over one of the phone booths two blocks from the park. Which is weird enough. But when they went to check, the phone booth was completely wiped down. No fingerprints on it anywhere, inside or out."  
  
"None? How is that possible?"  
  
Jackson leans back in his chair. "Realistically, it shouldn't be. But if the perp wiped it down right before we showed up, it's more possible. But, yeah, no prints anywhere on it. When we got to the scene, it was a nightmare: blood still mostly wet on the grass. Horrible." Jackson shudders, and his eyes flick up to Jaebum's anxiously like he's waiting for something. The staff has been increasingly weird today, and it's starting to grind on his nerves. Jackson says this next part slowly; almost like he's tip toeing around it."Sorry. But, there were stab wounds. Multiple. The Commissioner wants to say it's just a random mugging but...the rest of us aren't so sure."  
  
Jaebum looks around for a chair and pulls up the closet empty one. He doesn't understand what everyone's deal is, or why they're acting more nervous than usual around him, but it's not nearly as important as getting some more information. "How's that?"  
  
"Well, for one, the stab wounds didn't seem that random. Maybe we're just projecting or looking for a pattern where there isn't one, but they seem placed. Deliberate. Second, he still had everything on him. We can't rule out the possibility of a backpack that's been stolen but no one thinks he had one. All of his personal stuff was still with him: wallet, keys, cell phone. Almost 600,000 won in his wallet. The only thing missing was any form of identification."  
  
It's weird, but it's not the weirdest thing he's ever come across. He decides to spare Jackson the emotional scarring and asks, "has he been identified yet?"  
  
Jackson shakes his head, blonde hair flopping back and forth, not meeting Jaebum's eyes. "Ummm..." He hesitates, and Jaebum notices the officer look at something over his shoulder. Suspicious, Jaebum narrows his eyes at him. "Not yet, but I think they're still working on it."  
  
"Hmm." He's about to say something else when he hears the Commissioner's voice come from behind him.  
  
"Detective! Nice of you to join us. Come on in here."  
  
Jaebum thanks Jackson with a short nod and makes his way into the Commissioner's office, sitting down in one of the plush armchairs across from the fancy, oversized desk. He wonders if Commissioner Tuan realizes how much of a waste of time this is but doesn't vocalize it. When the older man sits down across from him, Jaebum just studies his face while he tidies his desk nervously before looking up.  
  
"Glad you followed directions this time, Jaebum."  
  
"Not that I had a choice. Choi brought me here in his cruiser and didn't tell me where we were going."  
  
The Commissioner smiles at him, which he doesn't return. "But I'm sure you did realize where you were going before you got here."  
  
"Of course I did." He says this with enough attitude that he sees the first flicker of annoyance cross the Commissioner's face. Jaebum realizes he should really tone it down a little, but there's something so inherently frustrating about Police Commissioner Mark Tuan that makes him want to scream. They don't even hate each other; in fact, Jaebum likes and respects Mark more than any other person he knows, professionally and personally (with the exception of Youngjae). It's just that they disagree on their methods.  
  
"I know you're frustrated. But there's a lot to catch you up on."  
  
"They could have done that at the scene."  
  
"You were sleeping. The squad who got called down to investigate it didn't want to wake you."  
  
This sounds like bullshit, which it is. He rolls his eyes. "Like that's ever stopped anyone. They all look like they've been awake for days. They could have called me."  
  
Mark just smiles at him, but it looks...forced. Like he's trying to keep up a good show and keep Jaebum from asking more questions directly about the case. "It wasn't even ruled a homicide at that point. They didn't need to call you yet."  
  
"Oh, give me a break."  
  
"Well? You are a _homicide_ detective."  
  
Jaebum clicks his tongue in dismissal. "It was a stabbing ten feet away from a playground in a public park, Tuan. It was a murder."  
  
Mark shrugs. "You know the rules. Not a murder until coroner says it's a murder."  
  
He narrows his eyes. He's caught the Commissioner in the middle of a lie, or a least just a really bad mixup of a timeline. "Choi told me when he came to get me that it _was_ ruled a murder."  
  
"It was," Mark says, leaning back in his chair and playing absentmindedly with a pen. "After the scene had been searched, and after we brought the body here. That's why he came to get you, because the coroner ruled it a homicide."  
  
Jaebum immediately notices the inconsistency in their timeline and latches onto it. "That was fast. How long did the autopsy take? Plus, when Choi came to get me he said you've been trying to get a hold of me for two hours at that point."  
  
Mark rolls his eyes. "Don't be like this."  
  
"Be like what?" Jaebum asks hotly, getting angrier now. "I know for a fact that autopsy was short because it was clearly a murder. Waiting for the coroner to officially declare it is just an excuse. You all knew it was a murder as soon as it was called in, but I didn't get called. Why?"  
  
It goes quiet for a minute, Mark just watching him, and that's when Jaebum picks up on it: Mark is nervous about something. The pen between his fingers is deliberately keeping his hands busy, and Mark has been trying to stall him. There's something huge at play, something that everyone has been increasingly reluctant to tell him.  
  
"Jaebum..."  
  
Now he's angry. At first he was just irritated, but being their best and only homicide detective, there's no way they're going to keep vital information from him, and especially not when the first few hours are crucial to finding something to go on. "Just tell me, Commissioner. I still have to do my job."  
  
Jaebum watches as Mark glances over his shoulder into the bullpen and looks almost afraid. When Mark looks back at him, Jaebum is a little surprised to see that he suddenly, somehow, seems ten years older. With a sigh, the commissioner puts the pen down on his desk and folds his hands, looking at Jaebum with a seriousness that actually makes him a little worried. "Jaebum, the victim is your ex-partner."  
  
He's so caught off guard that the words don't make any sense to him. _"What?"_  
  
Mark sighs again, and his face falls into worry. "Jaebum. The victim..." he swallows and starts over, clearing his throat quietly to rid it of the tremor. "The victim is Yoojin."  
  
His whole body feels cold, too hot, then cold again, like someone is switching him maniacally between ice water and a hot spring. Mark's face is ashy, stricken; he looks the way everyone else in the station probably feels. There's a numbness spreading through him from the center of his chest as he slowly absorbs the news.  
  
_Yoojin..._  
  
He hasn't really thought about Yoojin in years. Not in a positive way, anyway: Kim Yoojin was his partner on the beat when they were both still rookies: freshly 20, the two of them, and not really any good at being cops yet. But they had each other, and for a while Jaebum was convinced that the two of them would be the type of officers who would stay partners until one or both of them died. They had been friends since they were ten years old: Jaebum and Yoojin had been inseparable since the day they had met. They'd gone through everything together: school, first girlfriends, Jaebum's first boyfriend, the accident, the police academy. There seemed to be no travesty or change that would be able to pull them apart. It'd only been about a year after their official first patrol together that Yoojin had...left them.  
  
He remembers the way he had walked up behind Yoojin where the taller of the two had his back turned to the rest of the bullpen. It was surprising, how early he was there: their 5am patrols always started at 5:30 when Yoojin was inevitably late with one excuse or another. Jaebum had come in almost 2 hours early for some reason that he can no longer recall, but Yoojin had already been there. The Commissioner, the older man before Mark came and replaced him, wasn't even there yet, so Jaebum had felt a little suspicious.  
  
"Yoojin-ah," he had called, a smile already on his face when he pushed his police man's hat back on his head. "Early day or late night?"  
  
Yoojin didn't answer him. His back had still been turned, and the smile had slipped from Jaebum's young face when he noticed the tightness in his partner's shoulders. They were attuned to each other to the point that Jaebum knew the strain in his partner's back was from fear, and not from stress or anxiety about the job. When Jaebum got closer he could see that there was a folder in Yoojin's hands, a picture on top of rumpled paper. The photo was grainy, dark, but it looked like a crime scene photo. Jaebum could make out the shape of a body, and an anxiety immediately started to rush it's way through him at the thought that Yoojin might be in some kind of trouble.  
  
He had put his hand on Yoojin's arm then. "Yoojin—"  
  
Yoojin's response was fast and violent. He turned immediately, his usually handsome face drained of color and contorted into a look of barely controlled anger mixed with some sort of unbridled horror. Jaebum saw Yoojin's hand at the same time he felt it hit his chest and shove him backward violently. The force of it had sent Jaebum sprawling into a desk, one hand desperately scrabbling for purchase but only swiping papers onto the floor. The few other officers in the building had pushed out of their chairs immediately, shouts of confusion and protest raising up and drowning out the noise of pain Jaebum made when his head slammed into the carpeted floor. Before he knew it, Yoojin was on top of him, one hand fisted in the shirt of his uniform and the other coming down repeatedly into his face. The beating felt senseless, violent; spurred by some other terror in Yoojin that blinded him to the one person who might have understood whatever was in that folder. The rest is hazy—Jaebum remembers barely being able to see out of either of his eyes, his head swimming as the world narrowed down to a scarlet-tinged tunnel as he could only stare up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling while both his eyes slowly swelled shut. There were shouts as the officers tried to grab Yoojin as he threw himself off Jaebum and bolted, grabbing the folder from the desk as he fled. Commissioner Park had appeared then, seeming to materialize before his eyes.  
  
The rest is a blurry mess that's hard to sort through: the way they found Yoojin in the street, desperately trying to get himself hit by a moving vehicle. Whatever he had seen in that file had been destroyed: luck had been on his side and the city's well-known homeless already had a fire going a few blocks down from the station, which is as far as he made it before he was tackled in the street. Then there was the hospital, the trial, the therapy. After he was fired from the force and sentenced to a couple years in prison, none of them had ever heard from Yoojin again. Jaebum only thought of him sparingly, and when he did, it only brought him pain, so he tried not to think of Kim Yoojin at all.  
  
Jaebum blinks a few times, pulling himself away from the memory when he realizes that Commissioner Tuan had been speaking to him. The blood still roars in his ears, his heart drumming. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"  
  
He registers the look of total horror on Mark's face and feels a little guilty. "I asked if you were alright. You went completely white, and had a look in your eyes like you were a thousand miles away. I've been calling your name for five minutes. Aish, Jaebum, you were practically _comatose_ . Are you alright?"  
  
Shaking his head as if to clear it, he nods. There's still a tightening in his chest, and the feeling confuses him. He can't decide how he feels; part of him feels like it's going to collapse on itself: Yoojin was his partner, after all, and after their time together as children, then teenagers, then adults, and then their first year as partners, a bond between them was created that Jaebum had never expected to break so suddenly. The other half, though, is angry. Why should he be upset? He hasn't spoken to Yoojin or even really thought of him in 8 years. It was Yoojin who turned his back on everyone.  
  
"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"  
  
Mark just stares at him for a moment. "Besides the fact that you just looked like you'd fallen into a coma? Because he was your partner, Jaebum, and your best friend. I understand if you're upset—"  
  
Anger flashes through him, hot and quick, and it makes the blood pound louder in his ears. "I'm not upset that he's dead. I'm upset that I was prevented from doing my job." The unsteady beat of his heart makes him wonder if that's true or not.    
  
Across from him, Mark just pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment. Without looking up, he says, "Jaebum, it's alright to be upset that he's dead, he was your _partner—_ "  
  
It's enough. "He's been dead to me for eight years, Mark. Let it go. I have. Let me do my job."  
  
There's a heavy silence that follows, the sharpness of Jaebum's words hanging between them. He meant it, but at the same time it still feels like a lie. Before Mark can say anything else, there's a shout from the bullpen behind them and then a sudden rising clamor as multiple officers start to talk over each other. Turning in surprise, Jaebum looks out the open door of Mark's office to see multiple reporters tangled in the hallway, held back by Jackson at the forefront. They're all talking over each other, mics out with cameras at shoulder level or phones held up to record everything. Jackson turns his head, looking panicked. Jaebum sighs.  
  
"What the hell is this? It's barely been 4 hours."  
  
Mark scoffs from behind him, and Jaebum shoots him a scalding look. "What did you expect? Yoojin's case was no small ordeal. You remember. It was plastered all over the papers, Jaebum. You didn't think this was going to happen quietly, did you?"  
  
It's true, and this combined with the Commissioner's flippancy irritates him. "Are they even supposed to know about this yet? There hasn't even been a statement released, or a press conference."  
  
"No," Mark says, and he sighs again. "Not technically. But some homeless guy came up and discovered him probably right after the person who did it called the cops from the phone booth, and you know how that goes. Homeless people talk and reporters pay for that kinda talk. They'll say anything for the money."  
  
Jaebum huffs under his breath. "Great."  
  
They share a look for a moment, the silence between them offering them a small listen to the clamor still happening inside the station. Then, after seeming to decide something, Mark nods at him. He stands, grabbing his jacket and sliding it on, fixing the collar before looking at Jaebum still seated apprehensively in his chair. "Well. Time to feed the dogs."  
  
                              

 

  
The clamor only rises to near incoherence as Jaebum approaches the throng, Mark a few steps behind him. There's a solid 15 to 20 people shoved in the hallway directly outside the bullpen, and Jaebum squints at how many camera lights are being shined in their direction. They're all shouting over each other, microphones and cellphones stuck straight out like weapons. The officers are nervous, confused; Jaebum hears a few of them whispering to each other hurriedly about what they're supposed to be doing. Rolling his eyes, Jaebum pushes through the middle of the gathered officers to the front of small crowd, his eyes locking with the first reporter he sees. He looks like a kid barely old enough to be out of school, much less a salaried reporter.  
  
"First of all," Jaebum shouts, the loudness of his voice cutting through the noise like an axe. The voices around him all go quiet, with only low uttering here and there. He waits a moment, willing someone to interrupt him, and continues when no one does. "First of all," he says again, addressing the sandy-haired reporter in front of him. "How did you even get all the way back here with this many people?"  
  
Someone in the back of the tangle of reporters says, "is that really what's important—"  
  
"Shut up," Jaebum barks, and the chatter stops completely. There's an almost unsettling silence, then: he can hear Mark yelling at their receptionist. Now that he knows that Mark had slipped up front and wasn't in the room with them, he turns on the reporter in front again. "What's important is that you don't share any information, because all the information you have is likely false."  
  
The sandy-haired reporter in front of him just cracks a smile, his round cheeks making him look young. Jaebum wants to slap the smile off his face. The reporter holds his microphone up a few inches away from Jaebum's chest, and it feels like a challenge when he says, "so why don't you give us the real facts?"  
  
He's been doing this for too many years and dealt with too many punk ass young reporters who think they know everything to really feel affected by this. But there's still a lingering sense of imbalance inside of him, two sides yanking him back and forth in two directions, grief or anger? The anxiety of indecision snaps at him like teeth at his heels. Without really thinking, he angrily slaps the microphone away from his chest and feels a brief flash of satisfaction when the reporter loses his grip and it goes rolling across the floor. Shouts of protest and defense rise up, the other journalists gathered barraging him with empty threats. The sandy haired reported straightens up, face red with anger. "I could take you to court for that, you asshole."  
  
Jaebum's gaze flickers through the crowd, and he's about to open his mouth to reply when a reporter standing at the side has him doing a double take. He's just watching the two of them with a small smile on his face, like he's amused at watching two children squabble. The dark eyes behind the thick, black frames on his face are sharp, intelligent; they're already on him when he looks over and the intensity of the gaze makes him feel suddenly nervous. Jaebum feels a tickle in his mind, the curve of the man's mouth and the lines that radiate from his eyes as he smiles registers as vaguely familiar, but Jaebum can't place where or why. The reporter just smiles at him a little wider, cheek dimpling, and Jaebum has to swallow hard and look away before he gets lost in the swaths of dark peacoat tucked under the man's chin.  
  
Back to himself, Jaebum just sneers at the snotty reporter in front of him. "I'd like to see you try. Get out of my police station."  
  
The blond reporter looks like he's going to say something else, but then the man with the glasses steps forward and lays a hand on his arm. "Yugyeom-ssi," he murmurs quietly, and Jaebum is surprised to hear the deepness of the man's voice when he looks so delicate. "It's not worth it. Let it go."  
  
The reporter, Yugyeom, turns to look at his colleague. "He hit the mic out of my hand and is refusing to answer questions. I'm not going to let him get away with that."  
  
The man with the glasses glances at him, and yet again the look makes his insides churn. It's not like he's never seen anyone attractive before—hell, his past relationships were with some of the hottest men and women he'd ever seen, but there's something about the reporter in the glasses that makes him feel...uneasy. He's almost too handsome, and he's watching Jaebum with an intelligence in his dark eyes that makes Jaebum feel like he's missed something vital. Suddenly, a small smile pulls up the corner of his mouth again and he raises his eyebrows like he's waiting for something. "Well?"  
  
Jaebum blinks rapidly, realizing that he'd been focusing so hard on looking at the man in front of him that he hasn't heard anyone say anything. He looks around sternly, hoping that the practiced scowl masks the embarrassment he feels even as his face gets warm. Gruffly, he asks,"well, what?"  
  
The man's small smirk grows into a full blown smile. "Are you sorry?"  
  
Ah, so that's what he missed. All the reporters and the rest of the officers standing behind him are quiet, waiting for Detective Im Jaebum to lose it. Mark still hasn't come back yet, and Jaebum feels the discomfort tugging at his chest, but he only rolls his eyes. There's no use in getting angry at them now, especially when it's still so early in the case and it's going to get messier from here. Better to let it get messy on its own than to make it that way.  
  
He sighs.  
  
"Yes, I'm sorry." The shutter of cameras and clicking buttons fills his ears. "If your microphone is damaged I'll pay for it. Now, can you get out of my police station? We'll have a press conference when we have more information, and you can wave as many microphones in my face as you want."  
  
The young reporter, Yugyeom, looks at his companion for a moment before nodding quickly. With just barely a glance in his direction, the reporters all head off back down the hallway chattering loudly amongst themselves. The handsome reporter that had spoken to him turns back, throwing him another unsettlingly charming smile before disappearing around the corner.  
  
Mark comes back down the hallway, turning his head to look at them before stepping back out in front of all the gathered officers behind Jaebum. "What's this I hear about you assaulting one of those journalists?"  
  
A groan escapes Jaebum. "I didn't assault him. I knocked his mic out of his hand on accident."  
  
A few officers titter when Mark just makes a _yeah, alright,_ face at him. Jaebum continues with, "I'm serious! I apologized anyway. Kid got what he wanted."  
  
One of the officers says, "You were too busy staring at that reporter who stood up for him to hear what he actually said."  
  
Jaebum whips around, anger already rising and turning his face a familiar shade of red. He likes their officers, he really does: he's not exactly the friendliest guy on the earth, but all of their officers are nice enough people and Jaebum genuinely enjoys being around them. They're the type of group that is constantly throwing out harmless jab or cracking jokes, and Jaebum has been in this business for so long that his skin is incredibly thick. So while usually a joke like this would just skate off his back, today it makes him angry. Even as he turns he knows that whatever is making him feel this way is irrational but he can't stop it. Ever since Mark said the words it's been pounding through his head like a headache he can't shake. _Yoojin is dead. Yoojin is dead. Yoojin is dead. Whose fault is it? Yoojin is dead._ _  
_  
The wake up call, the news, the familiar handsome reporter with the knowing eyes. It's all so much, too much, and for the first time in nearly 8 years he feels his nerves _really_ unraveling. "Bullshit. Shut your goddamn mouth." He doesn't even realize he has his first already pulled back until Mark is getting a long arm around his waist and forcefully turning him away, dragging him back into his office. The officer watches him, looking pale with shock and tinged with what seems like a little bit of worry.  
  
His eyes close when he hears Mark shut his office door a little harder than necessary. That terrible sense of imbalance still lingers in him, and he takes a deep breath.  
  
"What's wrong with you?"  
  
The anger in Mark's voice shocks his eyes open. Jaebum blinks a few times, looking at the way Mark is standing behind his desk and leaning on it with both hands like he's about to launch himself across the top of it. He and Mark have never had any real issues—Jaebum has broken protocol God only knows how many times, and while he complains and gripes at him the entire time, Mark always picks up the pieces. Being so close in age, they understand each other a little better than they do the younger officers, which is both good and bad. But they've never really been angry with each other. Annoyed? Sure. But _angry?_ Jaebum is confused and a little hurt by Mark's sudden animosity.  
  
"What do you mean?" Jaebum tries to keep his voice level. It wavers a little at the end, and he hopes Mark doesn't notice.  
  
If he does, he doesn't say anything. "I mean what's wrong with you, Jaebum? First I tell you your ex-partner, the only one you've ever had as a police officer, is dead, your best friend, and you tell me 'he's been dead to me for years'. But then you assault a reporter and almost assault one of our own officers for making a stupid comment."  
  
"I didn't assault that reporter. Kid was being an asshole."  
  
Mark continues like Jaebum hadn't even spoken. "I'm worried about you. I mean it, Jaebum. You've broken more rules than someone in your position should break in 10 lifetimes but I've never flinched because you have always been rock-solid and accountable. But you can't even be honest with me about how it makes you feel that Yoojin is dead, and take it out on reporters and our officers? Who were defending you?" Mark's chest is rising up and down quickly, his breath coming short. Jaebum feels stunned: Mark never says this many words to him in a week, so hearing an entire tirade from him makes Jaebum feel that much more thrown off. "If you can't be honest with me, Jaebum, I'll bring someone in. You won't work the Yoojin case."  
  
His hands tighten to fists in his lap. "I have to work Yoojin's case."  
  
_You can't even be honest with me about how it makes you feel that Yoojin is dead?_  
  
It plays over and over in his head like a loop. Beats against his ears like ocean waves and threatens to drag him under. Panic washes up to join the uncertainty of anger or guilt or misery.  
  
"Technically, you don't. I'm well within my rights to keep you off this case and place you on leave for the duration because of your proximity to and history with the victim. Just be honest with me," Mark says, and there must be something in his look because Mark softens a little. He sits down in his chair, folding his hands on the table. "Just be honest."  
  
Jaebum takes a deep breath. "I don't know."  
  
Mark sighs, clearly dissatisfied. "Jaebum-ah—"  
  
"No," Jaebum interrupts, looking at a spot over Mark's head on the wall instead of directly at him. "I don't _know_ . I want to be angry. He beat the shit out of me and then left me. Tried to get himself killed so he wouldn't have to face me or whatever was in that folder. I want to feel grief, because I loved him like my own brother. My first and last partner. Responsible for my life as much as I was his. And then he left. Hurt me as much as he could and then left me to do this on my own." His chest hurts. It hurts. It hurts. "But mostly I'm confused, Mark. Yoojin was someone I trusted with my life but he kept this whole side of himself secret from me when I told him everything. I feel like..." he swallows, feeling unsteady. "I feel like I don't know him at all."  
  
Even as he says the words, he realizes that they're exactly what he's been tearing himself in half over: the uncertainty of feeling anger or grief, because which one are you supposed to feel for someone that you don't know? The revelation that maybe he never knew Kim Yoojin as well as he thought he did hits him like a ton of bricks. Over 10 years of friendship that Yoojin threw away in the span of a few minutes because of something he got in the mail, something he couldn't tell his best friend about.  He watches Mark's face as he grits his teeth, wondering how hard he has to do it before they'll shatter in his mouth.  
  
"Alright," Mark finally says, and Jaebum feels relieved. "You can work Yoojin's case. But the moment it becomes like it was just a few minutes ago, you're gone."  
  
Jaebum nods. It's not comfort, and it's not an answer, but it's a start.  
  
                          

 

  
  
After all the dust settles, Mark sends Jaebum home. Jaebum complains loudly, naturally, but Mark insisted.  
  
"There's nothing else you can do today," he had said, giving Jaebum a firm look from behind his desk. "Go home, get some rest, and be back early tomorrow. Tomorrow is when the hard stuff really begins."  
  
Jaebum had sighed and leaned against the doorframe. "Is it really appropriate for a homicide detective to leave when there's a fresh case to go over?"  
  
Mark just rolled his eyes. "With how close you are to this case? Yes. I need you to collect yourself before we start digging into the evidence. This isn't going to be easy on you."  
  
"Do you know that I'm also your lead homicide detective?"  
  
"Yes, but you're not the _only_ lead homicide detective. I could have someone here from Busan or Daegu by tomorrow and you know that." It was a dismissal if he had ever heard one, and he had turned away from Mark's office without giving the older man the chance to finish his sentence.  
  
Uncertainty still warred with itself in his gut as he returned to his own office and grabbed some files from his desk that he wants to look at. Mark might be sending him home, but that doesn't mean he's not going to work. Rummaging through the chaos of the top drawer of his filing cabinet, he's about to give up when his fingers brush the thick envelope he'd been looking for. With a quiet noise of relief, he yanks it out from under a few more heavy envelopes and looks at it. He runs a thumb over the sloppy letters indenting the paper of the envelope in faded blue ink:  
_  
_ _Kim Yoojin vs. Im Jaebum and the Seoul District Police Department (2008)_  
  
And underneath that, stamped in red:  
_  
_ _CASE CLOSED, DEC. 2008_ _  
_  
Jaebum closes his eyes for a moment. He remembers the day that the jury came back and convicted Yoojin. They had deliberated for less than 5 hours on the case, and they completely turned down his insanity plea. But they still gave him a chance by only giving him 4 years and removing him from Seoul entirely when his time was served. Jaebum remembers sitting stone faced on the defendant's side of the room when they read out the guilty verdict, and the way Yoojin screamed in agony. _JAEBUM!_ he had screamed frantically, trying to kick away from the officers grabbing onto both his arms. _JAEBUM-AH, Jaebum! I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I'm sorry I didn't tell you!_ And then before he could say anything else he was dragged away, eyes locked on Jaebum's. That's the last time Jaebum had seen Kim Yoojin.  
  
"What were you going to tell me?" he whispers, running his fingers over the letters again. His heart thumps painfully in his chest and he turns, looking for his briefcase before remembering he didn't grab it when Youngjae picked him up earlier. Jaebum doesn't think anyone will say anything to him about it when he leaves, mostly because they know it's a sore subject and so the other officers generally leave it alone. But he's not going to take his chances today, so he tucks it into his jacket with the writing against his shirt.  
  
The sun has been up for hours now, and 11am has the sun streaming in through the massive glass windows and striping the station in bars of light. Jaebum nods to the few officers who get distracted enough to look up as he passes by before they look back down at whatever is on their desk. If their timeline is correct, Yoojin's been dead for about a full 12 hours now. The thought feels alien to him, like it's happening to someone else. And in a way it feels like it is, because what he had said to Mark earlier was true: did he even know Kim Yoojin at all? There seems to be so much that he doesn't know about the man he considered his brother. That feels like a betrayal in of itself, and he can feel his teeth grind together in anger or anxiety, or both. He's so lost in his thoughts that he doesn't see the person standing at the top of the stairs outside the station, and he slams right into them.  
  
"Yah," the man says, slightly irritated but not overtly angry, when Jaebum bumps into his back. The notebook he'd been holding and Jaebum's folder both hit the sidewalk at the same time, the two of them abandoning their grip on their items to keep each other from falling. Jaebum grips both of the man's biceps with his hands, and the man reaches back to hang on to Jaebum's forearm. When they've steadied a little, the man huffs out an apologetic laugh.  
  
"I'm sorry," Jaebum says, embarrassed. "I was daydreaming and wasn't paying attention."  
  
The man turns, and Jaebum feels his heart take a dive when he recognizes the handsome reporter from earlier. His hair is a little more disheveled, and the dark circles under his eyes make Jaebum think he's been awake longer even than some of the officers. But when he looks into Jaebum's face and recognizes it, he breaks out in a soft smile that crinkles up the corners of his eyes. Jaebum pretends not to notice.  
  
"Ah, Detective Im. Do you remember me?"  
  
That deep voice surprises him again. Wrapped in a black peacoat that's cinched at the waist, the man looks smaller and more delicate than Jaebum would imagine he really is. Not that he's imagining how small or delicate the reporter from earlier might be, obviously.  
  
He nods quickly. "Yes, I do."  
  
The man's smile seems to widen, and Jaebum feels his heart do something weird at the lines radiating from the corners of his dark eyes. He notices the dimple again and tries to act like he doesn't. The man nods a little, still smiling. "That's good. You were very focused on not trying to kill Yugyeom, I think, so I thought you may have forgotten me."  
  
He laughs quietly, making it obvious that he's just kidding. Jaebum smiles tentatively at him. "Ah, yes. I'm sorry about that." He sighs. "It's been a long morning. I lost my temper."  
  
"I hear you lose your temper quite easily."  
  
Jaebum snorts. He doesn't answer right away, instead bending down to retrieve the folders they both had dropped when they bumped into each other. Jaebum reads the front of the folder that the other man had dropped—the only thing on it was _(2008)_ written in red pen. He furrows his brows but doesn't question it, straightening and handing it to the man in front of him. "You heard correctly. Unfortunately."  
  
The reporter's slim fingers brush his knuckles when he takes the folder, and Jaebum pulls his hand back quickly. He notices a quick flash of hurt across his face, but then the smile comes back and his eyes crinkle again. Jaebum feels his heart stutter uncertainly and tries to force it from his thoughts. Suddenly, as if surprised, the reporter gasps. "I'm sorry! How rude of me. I didn't even introduce myself." He puts his hand out and Jaebum can't help but glance at it apprehensively. "I'm Park Jinyoung. I'm a writer for the Seoul Crime Report."  
  
His heart squeezes a little at the name, the sound of it dragging up memories from years ago. "Ah, a good friend of mine had a brother with the same name." Mentally, he chastises himself: he definitely hadn't meant to say that, but the anxiety humming in his blood at trying to have a conversation with someone so distractingly handsome is making him just say whatever comes first.  
  
Jaebum takes Jinyoung's hand nervously, hoping that it'll come off as natural. His slightly larger hand wraps around the other man's smaller one, and Jaebum feels a little shocked again at how small he seems. He feels a little distressed by the softness of his palms and the feather light touch of his fingers against the back of his hand again, so he breaks the handshake early. If Jinyoung is hurt by this, he doesn't show it.  
  
"Oh, really?" His brows furrow. "Had?"  
  
"He..." Jaebum swallows, not really sure if he's ready to share something like this with a stranger when it's something he rarely thinks about himself. But he brought it up, and he would feel rude not answering. "He died. My friend, I mean, not his brother."  
  
Jinyoung softens, giving him a look of sympathy that he doesn't know what to do with. "I'm sorry. It's a common name, I suppose, but I apologize for bringing up a bad memory by asking."  
  
"It's alright," Jaebum says, but he doesn't know how to continue. Suddenly uncomfortable, he stiffens a little, and the atmosphere grows awkward. His body is screaming at him to just walk away, but for some reason, he feels compelled to keep talking to the handsome reporter. He tucks the files in his jacket before shoving both hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. "Seoul Crime Report, you said? I've never heard of it."  
  
Jinyoung smiles at him, and it feels a little forced, but his reply is earnest. "It's a start-up thing, mostly print, but they do a lot of online articles as well." A car honks loudly behind him, and Jinyoung turns to look at it, waving to the driver. When he turns back to Jaebum, his smile is a little tighter and it doesn't reach his eyes. His voice when he says, "it was nice to meet you, Detective Im. I look forward to the press conference," is a little too loud; too brisk. It's obvious without being obvious that he feels like Jaebum had written him off. Jaebum sighs, nodding a weak farewell when Jinyoung looks back at him before getting into the car and slamming the door.  
  
It's weird to him that he feels a little guilty about it--he doesn't even know the guy, but the look that Jinyoung had thrown over his shoulder before getting in the car struck him in a way that he hasn't felt for a very long time. The air of familiarity still clings to him, but Jaebum can't place why or even how he would know him, especially since Jinyoung says he's from Changwon—he doesn't even know anyone from Changwon. After a few minutes of deliberating to himself, the cab he'd called earlier pulls up to the curb and honks the horn at him, which abruptly startles him from the rabbit hole he'd been chasing his thoughts into. Sighing quietly to himself, he tries to shake off the weirdness. It's been a long day already, and the coming days are going to get longer and longer.

 

  
The next morning is the press conference, and Mark ushers him to the side of the ballroom as soon as he steps through the door.  
  
"Jaebum-ah," Mark says, and the strained tone of his voice has a few people looking over at them where Mark is trying to lead him toward the wall, away from the crowd of people. In an uncharacteristic display of malice, Mark bares his teeth at them and not-so-kindly tells them to fuck off in his distinctly and obviously American way. Jaebum is surprised--Commissioner Tuan, generally laconic and reserved, is aggravated and antsy today in a way that makes him nervous. When he finally gets Jaebum away from the bulk of the people crammed into the room, he runs a hand through his blonde hair and blows out a lungful of air. The strong scent of coffee hangs between them as Mark searches his face, as though he can't decide what to say.  
  
"Mark, whatever you have to tell me, tell me. The press conference is going to start soon and if there's information you have that I don't, I'm going to need it. I don't need to look like an idiot up there."  
  
"You don't need any help looking like an idiot," Mark tries to tease, but it's lackluster and he seems to visibly deflate when he realizes it.  
  
Jaebum glances around the room for a moment--the ballroom isn't massive; in fact, it's quite small, and Jaebum is a little surprised that they would choose this place for something as high profile as this press conference. There's reporters packed wall to wall almost, all of the folding chairs filled with journalists and camera crews standing wherever there's a free spot. A small stage has been erected in the front, and the only thing on it is a long table draped with a cloth bearing the official Seoul Police Department seal on the front of it. Someone had the good sense to hang a backdrop behind it, hiding the (frankly) quite ugly paintings that are hung on the rest of the walls, situated perfectly in between the windows on both sides. The backdrop, like the rest of the last-minute decor, is gray: it lends the sense of a dreary atmosphere, and the room is already tense as it is. He frowns.  
  
"There's nothing new yet," Mark says suddenly, voice quiet. Jaebum turns back to him with the frown still settled firmly in place. "But we need to make sure our timelines match up. I know you didn't get a chance to investigate the scene--"  
  
Jaebum bristles a little. "They're going to love that."  
  
"--but just stick to what you know," Mark finishes, rolling his eyes a little. "I know there's not a lot to go on, but they're going to ask a million questions like there is."  
  
"Mark, this isn't my first press conference. I know how it goes."  
  
Suddenly, Mark's face drops into a look of sympathy so sincere that Jaebum feels his stomach twist. Someone at the front of the room announces that the press conference will be starting in five minutes, and that everyone needs to take their places. Mark lays a hand on his shoulder gently, and the reassuring nature of the touch seems to have the opposite effect on him. "I know," he says, and squeezes. "But this is the first press conference where they're going to make it about you."  
  
Without saying anything else, Mark wanders away and heads toward the steps on the side of the stage. Frozen, Jaebum realizes that Mark is right--the only questions that anyone is going to be interested in are the ones that have to do with his involvement with Yoojin, and whether or not Jaebum had anything to do with it, or knows anything about it. He's hardly even thought about Yoojin in the past eight years, much less talked about him: the only times he's ever even brought Yoojin up is when he was starting to get serious with someone and his trust issues became more and more apparent. Even then, Yoojin was barely a passing thought in his mind as he attempted to explain away his reluctance to trust someone. Can he really sit up there in front of hundreds of prying reporters and answer questions about Yoojin without losing it?  
  
"Detective Im!" Mark calls to him, and Jaebum starts a little. He grits his teeth--the press conference hasn't even started yet and he's already on edge. "It's time to start. Join us, please."  
  
_Well,_ he thinks to himself, _guess we'll find out._  
  
As he makes his way to the steps and up them, he can already hear the light-speed shutters of the cameras going off all throughout the room. The sound digs at him, like bugs under his skin, and he nervously undoes the button of his grey suit jacket when he takes his seat next to Mark. Looking out into the room from his seat, his stomach rolls again as the sea of faces all blur together with the sheer number of them packed into the one room, all eyes on him. He gives a short nod to the moderator off stage, who then turns on his own microphone. Sweat begins to gather at his hairline and on his back, sticking his shirt to the skin. The moderator drones on about what is acceptable and what isn't, and that the only time questions will be allowed is when the reporters have the floor--but for the most part, the police department is in control of the press conference and will decide when questions begin and when they end. This, at least, Jaebum feels good about. He has faith that Mark knows what his limit is and will see it long before it approaches.  
  
Clearing his throat, Mark leans in to his microphone that's placed on the table in front of him. "Good morning. As you may know, I am Police Commissioner Mark Tuan. With me today are Officers Wang Jackson, Choi Youngjae, Song Junhoe, Kim Seungwoon, and head Detective Im Jaebum. Officers Wang, Choi, Song, and Kim were the first responding officers to the scene, and Detective Im was put on the case as soon as it was ruled a homicide by the coroner."  
  
A question rings through the air already from the back of the room out of turn. "Why wasn't Detective Im called to the scene?"  
  
The moderator scolds the offending reporter immediately, and turns to let Mark know that he doesn't have to answer right away and can instead proceed with what they had prepared. However, glancing over, Jaebum can see the tightness in Mark's jaw that alerts him to the fact that Mark doesn't feel like messing around today. There's a dangerous flash to his dark eyes as he leans in closer, and the next words out of his mouth fall heavily on the quiet room like a gavel. "As most of you already think, the victim was, in fact, Kim Yoojin, an ex-member of the Seoul District Police Department. This is now a confirmed fact, and I will give you a moment to write it down in your notebooks."  
  
Jaebum notices some of the reporters glancing around uneasily even as they jot down notes, and the room is rife with tension now.  
  
"As most of you may also know, Kim Yoojin is the ex-partner of Detective Im. Ten years ago, Kim Yoojin and Im Jaebum were sworn into the Seoul District Police Department as partners with routine patrols that included traffic stops, neighborhood watches, traffic control, and emergency response. Two years after being sworn in, Officer Kim Yoojin brutally assualted his partner, current Detective Im Jaebum, in the very police station where he still works to this day."  
  
Jaebum doesn't know what he was expecting Mark to say, but for some reason, it wasn't this. Each word strikes him in the chest like a blow, and he feels short of breath as Mark continues, venom dripping off the end of every word.  
  
"The fact is, that because of Detective Im's proximity to the victim, he was not called in right away. Officers Wang, Choi, Song, and Kim were given direct instructions by me to immediately search the scene and to secure it so that backup units could be called, as well as the crime scene unit. Detective Im was not notified of the crime until after the body had been identified by medical examiner Lee Jinhae. Even then, Detective Im was brought immediately to the station by Officer Choi and received the news from me. Press arrived shortly after, and after the situation was diffused, the decision was made to keep Detective Im on the case with the expectation that he will remain impartial and follow procedure. Detective Im was then sent home for the night by myself, again with the expectation that he would remain impartial to the case and show up to this press conference ready to face the press and the potential shit-storm this will bring him."  
  
The whole room, including himself, is shocked into silence. Even the moderator is balking at him, microphone dangling limply in one hand. Glancing over, Jaebum can see that Mark completely abandoned the statement he had prepared on a notecard in favor of the lecture he just gave. After seeming to survey the room for a challenge and receiving only silence, Mark cocks an eyebrow.  
  
"Any questions?"  
  
And the room explodes.  
  
Reporters and camera crews are practically crawling over each other, shouting at the top of their lungs in order to be heard. Multiple people stand up on their chairs, and the sudden clamor of voices layering over each other brings the room to a head-splitting roar that Jaebum can barely make heads or tails of. Mark just leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and laughing slightly--is this what he wanted? The journalists in the room are screaming so loud over each other that he can't even distinguish one question from another enough to give an answer. Flashbulbs burst over and over, imprinting themselves on the backs of his eyelids every time he blinks until he's sure he's going to go blind. It is chaos, utter chaos, and Jaebum has never seen anything like it in his entire ten years of being a cop. Just when he thinks that the press can't surprise him anymore, something like this happens. The tension built up in every fiber of his being feels like it's going to burst at any moment.  
  
Just when he can't take it anymore, Mark stands up calmly out of his chair. With two fingers in his mouth, he emits an ear-splitting whistle that has an equally deafening silence falling over the room in the expanse of a heartbeat. Every pair of eyes in the room is one him, his lean frame surprisingly relaxed despite the absolute oppressive air around them. The four other officers that are in attendance are struck dumb--Jaebum realizes with a stroke of pity that this is their first press conference, and he hopes, for their sake, that it's their last. It's wishful thinking, but the matching shocked O shapes of their mouths has him hoping that the rest of their careers aren't this difficult.  
  
Once he's confident that he has the attention of the whole room again, Mark sits back down. "Now, we're only going to answer a few questions. My officers have a lot of work to do, and since we barely know more than you do, it's a waste of time for us--and you--to be here." Mark squints, scanning the room for a moment. He lifts a hand, pointing in the center of the room. "You. What's your question?"  
  
Jaebum is so caught off guard by Mark's sudden tenacity that he almost misses the question: "Detective Im, do you have any comments on the theory that you may have been involved in Kim Yoojin's death?"  
  
He should have expected it--and in a way, he does. Jaebum woke up that morning knowing that at least _someone_ was going to ask, but when the question is finally directed at him, all his prepared answers go out the window. A steady rage seeps into every corner of him, holding him taut where the tension was only moments before. It's not surprise that the first question he gets asked is if he has something to do with murdering Yoojin--who else, if not him? But what most reporters don't know is that Jaebum has known Yoojin for close to twenty years--or, did. What nobody really knows is that in the twenty years that he's known Kim Yoojin, Yoojin had made a lot of enemies.  
  
Including, it seems, himself.  
  
Leaning in toward the mic, Jaebum curls both hands in his lap. "It's ridiculous, and frankly I'm disgusted that you'd ask. Next question," he says briskly, and feels a bolt of satisfaction at the obvious dejection of the reporter when he takes his seat.  
  
Someone in the front stands up, despite not being called on. "How deep was the relationship between you and Kim Yoojin, exactly?"  
  
It's not the question that offends him, but the double meaning behind it--as though somehow a hidden deepness in his relationship with Yoojin somehow made him more guilty. Anger sends blood rushing to his face, and he feels the heat in his cheeks even as he opens his mouth to say something ugly. Before he can say anything, though, his eyes fall on the reporter who asked the question: dark hair swept to the side, thick glasses pushed up the bridge of his nose by a soft, steady hand. Jaebum can just make out the collar of a pastel button up shirt underneath the same black peacoat cinched at the waist.  
  
"I--oh," he says, visibly starting. The rest of the room erupts into confused chattering, but Jinyoung just smiles at him where he's standing near the front of the stage. The smile isn't malicious--in fact, it's quite friendly (and alarmingly handsome, and the sweat collecting under Jaebum's shirt trails down his back now). Clearing his throat, Jaebum tries again. "I don't see the relevance of the question. He was my partner, and we were quite close."  
  
Jinyoung just watches him, and again Jaebum is struck by the familiarity in his features. There's something about the way he's standing, the curve of his jaw that fades into a long neck that fades into his shoulders... Jaebum looks up quickly, and there's a look on Jinyoung's face as though he knows what Jaebum's thinking. "Let me rephrase," he says, shifting from one foot to the other. "How long had you and Kim Yoojin known each other before becoming partners?"  
  
"A long time," Jaebum says, and he's relieved at how naturally and unpainfully this part comes to him. "Since we were ten years old. We met in the schoolyard when he first moved to Seoul with his mom and brother. We had another friend--Taeyoung. It was just the three of us for a long time."  
  
A look flashes across Jinyoung's features, and it's so sharp that Jaebum sees it from where he's sitting but he doesn't have time to process it before Jinyoung's face clears again, smoothing itself into a look of professionalism. "Did Taeyoung not want to become a police officer?"  
  
This question seems oddly out of place, but he answers it anyway. "A little irrelevant, but for sake of transparency, I'll answer it. Yoojin and I met first, and we were fast friends. We met Taeyoung a few months later, and for a long time it was just the three of us. But when we were seventeen, Taeyoung died." Jaebum pauses and notices that the room has fallen into silence, every pair of eyes on him, in curiosity this time instead of the shock that was directed at Mark a few minutes ago. "After Taeyoung died, Yoojin and I... we were devastated. But we moved on, and we decided to become cops together. In short, Yoojin and I were very close for a long time."  
  
When Jaebum looks back at Jinyoung, there's a tightness to the other man's features that wasn't there before. The answer seemed to upset him, for some reason--it's a sad story, sure, but it was years ago. And as much as he misses Taeyoung, he's had plenty of time to heal. Jinyoung's seemingly strong reaction to the reveal that there was a third person in his and Yoojin's relationship confuses him, and then Jinyoung looks him dead in the eye and asks, with a voice as cold as steel, "So you didn't have anything to do with Yoojin's murder?"  
  
Anger flashes through his blood, quick and hot. "No." He half stands, buttoning his suit jacket with one hand as he leans closer to the mic, looking away from Jinyoung and into the crowd of reporters who still seem to be waiting for a bomb to drop with bated breath. "I did not murder Kim Yoojin, but I will find out who did. We're done here."  
  
The room breaks out into a clamor again as Jaebum storms off stage, the four silent officers staring after him as Mark tries to do some damage control.  
  
The noise of flashing cameras and reporters shouting over each other to be heard assaults the side of his head as he makes a quick exit, eyes forward and jaw tight as he pushes his way out one of the side doors. The hallway outside the ballroom is mercifully quiet, with only the muffled sound of chaos on the other side of the massive wooden doors a few feet down from him. The deep breath he inhales is unsteady, and it only makes him feel marginally more calm as he weaves his way through empty corridors and out the back door of the community center.  
  
Cold wind blasts across his face when the doors open, and he realizes belatedly that he left his coat inside. Sighing, he moves away from the double doors to stand a few feet away against the brick wall, finding the one spot of sunshine that isn't obstructed by the taller buildings around them. The bricks are cold when he leans back against them, arms folded, but he lets his gaze wander across the street at some of the bodegas packed side by side. They're not terribly busy this time of the week, and Jaebum can see the chaotic insides of the ones that keep their doors propped open, and he wills himself to calm down a little as his eyes focus on the sporadic bursts of color lining the walls.  
  
In all his years of being a cop, and the 6 that he's been a detective, he's never walked out on a press conference before. Anger tightens his chest again. It's barely been over 24 hours since Yoojin was murdered, and already the press are trying to goad him into giving away what he doesn't have: answers. Jaebum wants the answers just as bad as they do, and their unabashed inquiries of whether or not he's involved makes his stomach hurt. He realizes that there's no precedent for this, as far as he knows: is what they're doing really right? What's he going to do when he finds Yoojin's murderer? His body suddenly feels like its been dunked in ice water--he hadn't even thought that far, to catching Yoojin's killer. Can he really trust himself not to do something terrible?  
  
"Detective Im?"  
  
The soft voice from a few feet away makes him jump, left hand going to the gun on his hip before remembering that he didn't bring it. He turns his head to see the reporter, Jinyoung, halfway out of the heavy metal door. A confusing mixture of anger and anxiety flushes through him, and he turns away to look back at the colorful displays of the bodegas.    
  
"Detective Im," he says again, deep voice soft in a way that he thinks is trying to be soothing and apologetic all at once. He doesn't look over, instead focusing on the brightly patterned shirt of an older woman talking animatedly to the bodega owner. He hears Jinyoung sigh. "Detective--"  
  
He looks over quickly, arms still folded across his chest. Jaebum has to squint a little, the late morning sun bright and offering only a small amount of heat in the cold air. "What?" he snaps, his tone clipped.  
  
"I just wanted to apologize."  
  
Jaebum barks a laugh that doesn't hold much humor in it and looks straight, away from Jinyoung.  
  
Jinyoung comes all the way out of the door now, letting it fall shut behind him before stepping closer to Jaebum. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the way Jinyoung nervously fiddles with the ends of a deep red scarf tied tightly around his throat. "I'm serious, Detective. I'd like to apologize."  
  
Jaebum looks over again. "For what? For doing your job?"    
  
The other man flinches a little, shying away from the animosity in Jaebum's voice. "No--well, yes, I suppose." Jaebum watches him carefully as one of his hands goes to nervously push his glasses higher up his nose. "My question was out of line."  
  
Part of him just wants to scream--this is always the default excuse for a reporter who says something they shouldn't have. He's heard this excuse tens of thousands of times, and it holds as little weight as it always does. He scoffs. "Yeah, sure."  
  
His immediately dismissal brings some color to Jinyoung's cheeks, and Jaebum feels a small spark of satisfaction when the reporter's face pulls up in a look of annoyance. "Don't be so dismissive. I'm trying to apologize."  
  
Jaebum finally uncrosses his arms, letting his hands drop to rest on his hips. "Does it matter? Someone else is going to ask me the same question at least once a day until I find who really killed him. I've been a detective for six years already and a cop for almost ten. Your question doesn't faze me nearly as much as you're thinking it did."  
  
"Is that why you stormed off in the middle of the press conference?" Jinyoung spits at him, his hands no longer messing with his scarf but balled up into fists at his sides. "Because the question didn't faze you?"    
  
"I think I distinctly remember saying 'we're done here' before I left. Did you miss that part because you were too busy being sorry?"    
  
Jinyoung's face really flushes red with anger, and Jaebum just feels a sort of hysterical laugh rise in his chest. He's dealt with reporters hundreds and hundreds of times, had hundreds and hundreds of fights with them in public. He doesn't even know this guy and yet here they are, arguing behind the community center to see who can get more pissed off. If the back to back tragedies in his life taught him anything, it's how to be hateful. He's played this game with reporters, before,nb too: he's good at it.  
  
"Your temper is going to bite you in the ass one of these days, Detective."  
  
Jaebum shrugs. "Maybe. But for the last six years it's been solving all kinds of murders, so I think I'll be good."  
  
And then Jinyoung loses all sense of decorum. He spits, "You really are an asshole, aren't you?"  
  
Jaebum actually laughs this time, crossing his arms over his chest again. Jinyoung is just looking at him with distaste, dark eyes shuttered. He can't help but notice the hard line of the reporter's jaw where it's clenched tight in anger. "Are you surprised?"  
  
"A little bit," Jinyoung says honestly, but the anger covers up any surprise that Jaebum feels at the confession. "But no, I'm really not. I should have known."  
  
"You're still new to Seoul," Jaebum says offhandedly, reaching into his pocket to get his phone. "You'll learn."  
  
"I was just trying to apologize for making you upset, Detective," Jinyoung says, and most of the anger has faded out of the younger man's voice. Jaebum looks at him warily, thumb hovering over the screen of his cellphone. "So, I'm sorry."  
  
Hitting the answer button on the screen, Jaebum just looks at him and says, "it's best if you don't apologize, because I'm not going to. See you around," he says, and then he's turning away to jog through the mess of junk in the back of the community center to the sidewalk on the other side. He puts the phone up to his ear when he's finally back on the street. "Hello?"  
  
It's Mark. "Where the hell are you?"    
  
"I went outside."  
  
"That didn't go half as well as I wanted it to, but only went half as bad as I expected. Did you really need to storm off, though?"  
  
Jaebum sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Not really. But it was either that or the press conference really go to hell, so I figured that was a better option."  
  
"Catch a cab back to the station," Mark says, and there's nothing in his voice this time to give away how he's feeling. For all he knows, Mark might actually kick him off the case now. "We've got a lot of work to do."

  
  
  
When he gets to the station 45 minutes later, it is, understandably, in chaos. He finds out almost as soon as he steps in the door that Mark had finished the press conference out by giving them some actual details, such as where the murder took place and what kind of thing citizens should be looking out for in the area. Almost all of the phones in the building are ringing like crazy with tips (those money-searching and anonymous alike) from people who are probably just watching the news, and multiple officers are running back and forth between computers and fax machines and printers getting every single piece of information in order. Jaebum can see Mark sitting at his desk through his open door, ear to his shoulder cradling the phone. He weaves his way in between the officers, nodding here and there to a few and waving to Youngjae, who barely has time to look up from his computer.  
  
With a soft knock, Jaebum enters Mark's office and sits down across from him. Jaebum absentmindedly scrolls through his phone while he waits, reading some of the articles that have already been posted since the press conference. He mostly just skims them: no one really knows anything, at this point, and there's a restlessness in him that makes it hard to focus on the words anyway.  
  
Finally, after a few minutes of nodding and _hmm-_ ing and _uh-huh-_ ing _,_ Mark hangs up. He sighs heavily. "Sorry."  
  
Not looking up from his phone, he asks, "who was it?"  
  
"Some reporter from a place called The Seoul Crime Report." Jaebum's head whips up at this, alarmed, and there's a knowing look on Mark's face. "He mentioned you."  
  
"Look--"  
  
Mark just holds up a hand, but he doesn't seem angry. "He just explained to me that he felt like his question was out of line and for me to extend his apologies to you."  
  
Jaebum locks his phone and drops it in his lap, sighing in exasperation. "He tried to apologize to me after I stormed out, but I wouldn't let him."  
  
Leaning back in his chair a little, Mark snorts. "Of course you didn't."  
  
Jaebum tenses, getting defensive. "Should I have? An apology isn't going to make this any better. He was just doing his job. I've had reporters piss me off more for less shitty things."  
  
"I just think you didn't want him to be nice to you."  
  
"Aish..." Jaebum sucks his teeth dismissively and tosses his head. "Don't make it about that. It's not about that."  
  
Sighing, Mark drops it and just shakes his head. "Regardless, I told him to come in for an interview tomorrow."  
  
Jerking in surprise, Jaebum's phone slips from his lap and hits the floor with a soft thud. "Why?" He hopes that he packs as much disbelief into the word as much as he feels it.  
  
"Out of the other reporters, he seemed to be coming from a much less malevolent angle with his questions about Yoojin. He was calm after the conference and even came to find me to personally apologize for what he said."  
  
Anger spreads hot across Jaebum's chest, and he feels the burn of it in his face. "Are you sure? At there end there, he asked if I had anything to do with Yoojin's murder, point blank. Less malevolent, my ass."  
  
"Don't be so antagonistic at press conferences and maybe the press won't want to goad you into exploding on them."  
  
"Me?" Jaebum practically shouts, disbelief raising his voice a few octaves. "Me, antagonistic? Unbelievable," he scoffs, slumping back in the chair. "Who's side are you on, Mark?"    
  
If he's offended that Jaebum asked, he doesn't mention it. "I'm on Yoojin's side. This is about him, Jaebum, not you."    
  
He curls his hands into fists into his lap. "You don't know him like I did, Mark. You shouldn't defend him, not after what he did."  
  
This seems to hit a nerve, and Mark's jaw tightens. "What, that he got murdered?" his words are clipped with barely controlled aggravation. "I know that I don't know him, Jaebum, and that you don't feel the same way about this case as I do, but to me, he's a victim. And as the police commissioner, I am first and foremost on the victim's side. You know better."  
  
The chastisement feels like a slap, and Jaebum lapses into angry silence.  
  
"But that doesn't mean that I won't side with you when I need to," he says a moment later, and his voice has softened. "You've been doing this for six years, Jaebum-ah. I know that there's no precedent for this, but remember that you've been my head detective for the last six years because I can count on you. Don't go off the rails now."  
  
He doesn't know what to say--he's not use to this, to being...comforted. Usually when someone says something that upsets him, he doesn't give them the opportunity to take it back: he lashes out, and he lashes out fast, which just leads to him ending a lot of relationships. The people who do stick around long enough know better than to try and comfort him: Jaebum rarely accepts the niceties even when they're offered to him. Jaebum has the reputation of being the hardest detective in Seoul because of his unapologetic near-cruelty when it suits him. Comfort, when afforded to him, makes him feel displaced.  
  
"It's fine," he says stiffly, unsure of what to say. "I'll be fine."  
  
"You'd better be," Mark says, and most of the tense atmosphere dissipates. "You're going to be a part of that interview tomorrow."  
  
Jaebum breathes out heavily, deflating into the chair. He looks down at where his shoe is touching the edge of his phone under Mark's desk, but doesn't pick it up. "What are we even going to tell him? Right now, we're just trying to get information together. Do we even have anything to go on?"  
  
"Not really," Mark says honestly, leaning back in his chair. "Most of the CSI unit are still waiting on results from toxicology, or lab reports from the soil and other shit they picked up while they were there. Choi is working on drafting an unofficial timeline, including what may have happened before the stabbing."  
  
"I'll start looking into his time in prison," Jaebum says, cutting himself off with a yawn. He's pretty tired--it's barely three in the afternoon, but he's ready to be laid up on the couch with his computer instead of in a suit in his office. "See if there's anyone there that's notable, any trouble he got into while he was there."  
  
Mark nods in affirmation, and Jaebum stands up out of the chair to grab his phone before stretching. He's getting ready to leave the office when Mark stops him. "Wait."  
  
"What?" He asks, watching Mark carefully as he puts his suit jacket back on.  
  
"Did you ever go see Yoojin in prison?"  
  
His chest constricts a little. He's thought about this to himself thousands of times, but he's never had anyone else ask him with the expectation of a real answer. Girlfriends and boyfriends have asked him, sure, but one pained look and a dismissal of _Let's not talk about it anymore, I'm sorry, would you like another glass of wine?_ got him out of answering. But the way Mark is looking at him makes him itch, like Mark is more aware of Jaebum's emotions than he realizes.  
  
"No. I didn't."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Jaebum sighs, leaning a shoulder on the doorframe. "I didn't want to."  
  
"You didn't think you'd give him the chance to explain? To apologize?"  
  
"I didn't want him to. He had already done to me what he set out to do."  
  
Mark hmms quietly. "Maybe you didn't think you were going to like the answer?"  
  
Jaebum shakes his head sadly. "No. I just didn't think that he deserved it."  
  
"But what about you, then?" Mark asks, and there's a look on his face that holds more sympathy in it than Jaebum can process. It makes him uncomfortable, and he shifts on his feet with his shoulder still against the doorframe. "Didn't you deserve an explanation for what happened?"  
  
A million and one things pass before him, then, in the span of a moment. Voices from the past,  
  
_("How could you do that to him? You know how I feel about him!"_ _  
_ _  
_ _"I’m sorry, Jaebum--")_ _  
_  
he closes his eyes against the echo of fists landing on skin, the crack of a broken jaw, the seemingly endless flow of tears. When he opens his eyes again, Mark is looking at him with the same sympathy and he steels himself against it.  
  
"No," he says, and with a finality that signals that the line of questioning is over. "I didn't."

 

  
  
He doesn't leave right away, instead going to his office for a while to look into getting some insight into Yoojin's time at the prison. After two hours he starts to feel antsy, and he emails himself what little information was sent to him so that he can look at it at home. As he passes through the rows of desks, he notices that most of the officers that were here earlier are gone now: the station is, for once, mostly quiet. He can still hear Mark in his office, but Youngjae and Jackson are nowhere to be found, and he hopes that it's because they're gone for the day.  
  
Jaebum waits outside for the cab, arms across his chest to keep the cold at bay. The sun's going down now, the sky a rich shade of orange mixed with purple, and the lack of sunshine and still no coat has him shivering a little. He's absentmindedly wondering if he should stop somewhere for coffee when he hears the horn honk impatiently a few moments later. The taxi driver is surprisingly pleasant--usually, drivers that pick him up from the station either know him or know of him, and they keep to themselves. Whether it's because his reputation precedes him or just because they don't want to associate with him, he doesn't know, but he's fine with it either way. The less talking he has to do, the better.  
  
Once he finally arrives home, the sun has gone almost completely down and the street lamps lined up outside the buildings have come on, basking everything in an orange-ish glow. He turns away from the cab as it departs, moving to head up the stairs and into the lobby of his apartment building, but there's a person sitting in the middle of the staircase and watching him.  
  
His yawn is cut short when he realizes and startles. "What are you doing?"  
  
Jinyoung plays with the scarf around his neck again, the same one from earlier that day. "I was waiting for you."  
  
Jaebum bristles. "That's weird."  
  
Unexpectedly, Jinyoung laughs at this. It makes him a little wary, and he tenses. "I know. I should have thought about that."  
  
"What are you doing?" Jaebum asks again, a little more abrupt this time.  
  
Jinyoung looks up at him, glasses missing from his face. He's just as good looking without them, and Jaebum is internally annoyed at himself for noticing something so minute. There's a trepidatious air to the way Jinyoung is watching him, like he's waiting for Jaebum to go off on him again.  
  
"I know I tried to apologize earlier--"  
  
Jaebum sucks his teeth, tipping his head back. "Not this again."  
  
"I know, I know you said not to apologize--"  
  
Jaebum cuts him off again, finding his eyes in the dim orange light of the street lamps and holding them. "So why are you still trying?"  
  
"Because," Jinyoung says, getting up and hopping the last couple of steps to stand in front of him. "I feel bad."  
  
"You're a reporter," he snaps, taking a small step back. "Reporters don't feel bad."  
  
This seems to frustrate Jinyoung, which only grates on Jaebum's nerves even more. Why does he care so much? This case has been public for two days, and it's not like Jinyoung even knows him. He's had reporters much more mean than Jinyoung that never apologized, and he likes it that way. The fact that Jinyoung seems so determined to get on his good side has Jaebum wondering if there's an ulterior motive.  
  
"Maybe some don't, but I do," he finally says, and Jinyoung looks away for a moment. When he looks back, there's an expression on his face that Jaebum has trouble reading, which makes him uneasy: he's always been good at reading people. It's how he solves cases. "Look, I get that you're a big bad detective, and that you don't care about who you piss off or hurt as long as it solves your cases, but that's not who I am."  
  
"Clearly," Jaebum says, still wary but a little less angry. "You're a reporter."  
  
Almost unwillingly, the corner of Jinyoung's mouth pulls up in a smile before he drops it again. "And if you don't want to apologize for how you do your job, then don't. But you can't ask me to not apologize for how I do mine, especially when I feel like I've done my job incorrectly."  
  
"Are you apologizing for doing your job wrong, or for being a dick?"  
  
"Both."  
  
"I only care about one of those things," Jaebum says, crossing his arms over his chest. "Can you guess which one it is?"  
  
Jinyoung rolls his eyes in a way that Jaebum is almost impressed by: it's practiced, like he's had to roll his eyes at Jaebum's attitude a million times. "Doing my job incorrectly, I assume?"  
  
Jaebum nods. "Yes."  
  
The other man's shoulders drop in defeat. Sighing, he looks at Jaebum and says, "then I'm sorry for doing my job incorrectly."  
  
"Okay."  
  
Jinyoung just watches him, as though he's waiting for something else. "Is that it?"  
  
He pretends to think for a second. "Yes."  
  
"Do you accept my apology?"  
  
He can't take it anymore. Jaebum huffs out a breath in annoyance, pulling out his phone and dialing the number for a cab service. "Fine," he says sharply, but a wide smile breaks out on Jinyoung's face that crinkles the corners of his eyes in a pleasant way. He swallows, looking away. "Will you leave now?"  
  
"Yes," Jinyoung says, and Jaebum interrupts him to rattle off his address to the cab driver. Hanging up, Jaebum puts his phone back in his pocket and squints at Jinyoung in the dim light.  
"How did you know where I lived?"  
  
The cab must have just been down the street, because it pulls up a moment later before Jinyoung answers. Grinning, Jinyoung reaches out to squeeze his bicep and Jaebum feels his heart jump at the touch. Heading toward the cab, Jinyoung looks over to answer him. "Nothing a few calls and some sweet-talking couldn't handle. I'm a reporter, remember?" and then he slams the cab door shut, disappearing back into the Seoul night.  
  
Jaebum can't help it--he laughs a little. He shakes his head in disbelief as he mounts the stairs, wondering where in the hell Jinyoung came from and how, in such a short time, someone so frustrating could also be so alluring.

  


He wakes up the next morning to a phone call from the warden of the prison that Yoojin had been in, and it lasts much longer than he had expected. There's not a ton of new information, but it's more than he had, and he hopes that Mark finds it worth it when he jogs into the office almost twenty minutes late.  
  
Mark sees him as soon as he steps out from the hallway, his lean frame hanging off the doorway of the conference room that's situated between their offices. "Yah! Get in here!"  
  
Jaebum jogs over, pushing past Mark to get into the conference room and sit down. The cab driver had insisted that he keep his window down, and the cold wind assaulting his face for the duration of the thirty minute drive has his skin feeling painfully dry. Mark closes the door to the conference room, taking a seat across from him and watching him with a raised eyebrow as Jaebum buries the lower half of his face in his scarf. "Sorry," he finally says, looking up at Mark. "The warden called this morning and it took longer than I expected. He's got a lot to say."  
  
Dragging a notepad closer to him, Mark nods in the direction of the other person sitting at the table with them. "Any regard for our guest?"  
  
"Oh," Jaebum says, caught off guard. He had totally forgotten that Jinyoung was going to be here. Looking over, Jaebum offers him an awkward nod. "Hello, Jinyoung."  
  
"Hello, Detective," Jinyoung says, and smiles at Jaebum over his coffee. "Thank you for calling me a cab yesterday."  
  
Mark blanches, and Jaebum just sighs. "You're welcome. And just...call me Jaebum. It's fine."  
  
"You called him a cab?" Mark sputters, and Jaebum thinks he's overreacting. "From the station?"  
  
"No, from my house," Jaebum replies, and he shoots Mark a look that screams _now is not the time or place,_ which Mark ignores.  
  
"Are you shacking up with a reporter now?"  
  
Now it's their turn to blanch—Jinyoung chokes on his coffee and Jaebum angrily throws his pen at Mark, satisfied when it bounces off his chest. "Yah, have some decorum, Commissioner. He came to my house to apologize."  
  
"Relax, Im," Mark says, smiling at him in a way that makes him think of a child getting their way. "I was kidding. Did you accept his apology?"  
  
"He did, actually," Jinyoung chimes in, and smiles at Jaebum from across the table. He wonders how many more times he's going to have to see that infuriatingly nice smile in the next couple of months, or however long the case takes. He hopes it's less.  
  
Jaebum begrudgingly agrees and then promptly changes the subject. He leans down to pull out the folder of information he'd gotten out of his briefcase and spreads the papers across the table. "First, I think we should speculate on what we think happened. Come up with a timeline. Did Youngjae ever finish that?"  
  
Mark narrows his eyes at him for a moment before seeming to drop it, and he nods. He pulls out a piece of paper from between the pages of his notebook and turns it toward him so he can look at it.  
  
It's...not a lot. So much of Yoojin's murder is a mystery. The page is barely half filled, and is all speculation to boot. He sighs. "This is nothing."  
  
"I know," Mark says, and Jaebum looks up at him.  
  
"What have you told him?" He asks, nodding in Jinyoung's direction.  
  
"Whatever's on there. We've been waiting on you to show up with more information."  
  
"Okay," Jaebum says, and he takes a deep breath before starting. His eyes flick to Jinyoung, who has a voice recorder set out on the table between them. He's surprised to find Jinyoung already looking at him, and Jaebum looks at his papers again quickly. "He was in relatively low security, so he was more or less independent in whatever way prisoners can be. The warden told me that, though Yoojin became very well known after the inmates found out about what happened, he kept a relatively low profile throughout his time there. He got In a few fights the first couple of months, but nothing serious." The room is silent when he pauses, Mark and Jinyoung seeming to hang on to his every word. The late morning sun filters into the conference room through the half open blinds, and Jaebum looks up to sene Jinyoung squinting into the brightness. He surprises himself by saying, "I can close the blinds, if you want."  
  
Jinyoung seems startled. "Are you talking to me?"  
  
He's embarrassed, and he tries to cover it up by saying offhandedly, "yeah. That side of the table catches all the light."  
  
"That's okay," Jinyoung says, and he shifts in his chair so that the sunlight still illuminates his face but isn't shining directly into his eyes anymore. "Thank you, though."  
  
He just nods, not looking at Mark, whom he can feel is burning a hole through the top of his head. "Anyway, there's only one incident that's really notable." Jaebum pulls out an incident report that the warden had faxed him while they were on the phone. On the front of it is a picture of Yoojin, face bloodied from a fight and looking defiantly into the camera in a way so inherently Yoojin it makes his stomach hurt a little bit. Clearing his throat, he continues: "The way some of the witnesses describe it is that one of the other inmates provoked Yoojin by...talking about me. Apparently it's someone who knew me in high school, which is unsurprising I guess. I don't recognize the name— Bae Junhong—but he apparently riled Yoojin up enough that Yoojin started a fight. It got pretty ugly—" Jaebum pulls out a page from the report that has photocopied pictures of the other inmate's injuries and hands slides it across the table in between Mark and Jinyoung. "Yoojin broke his nose and two places in his cheek, but after a week in solitary there wasn't really any more incidents. Some insubordination, not listening to the officers, getting out of bed and pacing after lights out. Stuff like that."  
  
"So you do you think this Bae Junhong might have something to do with it?"  
  
Jaebum sits back in his chair heavily, carding a hand through his hair. "I don't think so. Based on his priors and what he went in for, he doesn't sound like the type to really get revenge."  
  
"You'd be surprised," Jinyoung says quietly, and Jaebum looks over. There's a seriousness to his tone that momentarily makes him wonder if he's underestimating the tenacious reporter. "People are crazy."  
  
Mark nods. "That's true. Is he still locked up?"  
  
Jaebum looks at Jinyoung for a moment longer, their eyes locked, before he shakes off the strange feeling creeping up his throat and looks away. "No, he got out a year after Yoojin did. Looks like he still lives in Seoul."  
  
"Should we have someone talk to him?"  
  
"Yeah," Jaebum says, and he sighs. "I guess. I don't think he'll know anything but might as well. Send Choi. We can have someone dig up the guy's information and he can take Jackson with him."  
  
Mark gets up, leaving the room and shutting the door behind him to go find either of the officers. In the silence, Jaebum fiddles with the papers in front of him to keep from having a conversation, but a few minutes pass and he hears Jinyoung lean forward to turn off his tape recorder. "Are you alright?"  
  
The question catches him off guard, and he looks up. "I'm fine. Why?"  
  
"I'm sure this isn't easy."  
  
He knows where this is going, so he looks away. Dismissively, he says, "I'm a homicide detective. My job isn't ever easy."  
  
"That's not what I meant."  
  
Jaebum resists the urge to crumble up the paper in his left hand in frustration. He looks up, shooting daggers. "Do you _care?"_  
  
There's an almost tangible tension to the room now that wasn't there before, and Jaebum hopes that it won't always be like this, or, better yet, he won't always have to be alone with Jinyoung at all. _Not that you'd mind,_ he says to himself, and immediately tries to backpedal and shove the thought far, far out of reach. He tells himself the only reason he thinks that is because he hasn't had sex in forever, and his brain is starting to get desperate.  
  
Which would explain why he can't stop noticing how good-looking Jinyoung is, but it certainly doesn't explain why Jinyoung seems so concerned about him.  
  
"Should I not care about you?"  
  
Jaebum actually laughs, sharply and without humor. "You don't even know me."  
  
The man across from him folds his arms across his chest in what is seemingly a childish act of _you can't tell me what to do,_ and then he says, "Do I have to know you to care about your feelings as a human being?"  
  
Jaebum just stares at him. The other man's eyebrows are stitched together in defiance, like he's challenging Jaebum to keep arguing, or to accept that someone actually gives a shit how he feels. After a tense moment of them making extremely pointed eye contact, Jaebum angrily crumples up a piece of paper from the top of his notepad and tries not to throw it. "God, you're infuriating." He doesn't really mean to say it, but now that it's out, he doesn't regret it and he doesn't take it back.  
  
Jinyoung smiles at him, which just seems to irritate him further. "Thank you."  
  
He's about to say something else when Mark comes back in the room, and Jaebum flushes red in frustration and looks away. He can feel Mark looking between the two of them like he's trying to figure out if anything happened while he's gone,  and he sits down after seeming to decide it didn't. "I want to know what you think happened."  
  
He's grateful for the distraction from the flustered irritation building up in his chest. Jaebum has been thinking about this almost non-stop since he found out that Yoojin is dead: what happened? In the four years between going to prison and getting out, what sort of thing could he have done or tried to do that would have gotten him killed? What sort of things had he done in prison that would make him enemies even on the outside? Or, worse yet, was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? The possibilities are endless, and he feels frustrated at his lack of answers. Suddenly and horribly, he feels guilty that he never tried to talk to Yoojin in prison. Maybe if he had, he would have gotten a better insight into what he was doing that might have caused him trouble or would have, hopefully, avoided this entirely. Could it really be his fault that Yoojin is dead, even if he's not the one who killed him? His heart feels like it's on the verge of shattering at the thought of being responsible for another tragedy at the hands of someone he loved.  
  
"Maybe..." Jaebum starts uncertainty, and he's frustrated at trying to explain how he feels. He's not used to it, and it makes him uncomfortable like feeling a rock in his shoe. "Maybe he came back because he had something to tell me. Something to finish. When he was sentenced...when he was sentenced, he told me he was 'sorry he didn't tell me'."  
  
_(Freshly twenty-two, and already tragedy has found him more times that it had reason to: first Taeyoung, and now this. He sits in the courtroom in a suit that the police department had paid for, stitched up and drugged on painkillers that they'd also paid for. The left side of his face still throbs, his nervous heartbeat beating against the bruised and put-together skin. His right eye, at least, has faded from its swollen state into a disgustingly purple and yellow black eye, but he can see out of it enough to avoid eye contact with anyone and everyone who looks his way. To his side mere feet away, Yoojin is sitting at an identical table decked from head to toe in the hospital-white of inmate's clothing, shackled at the wrist with his head down. His long black hair has gotten longer, and it hangs a little lankily around his face. Jaebum only looked at him once when he came in, and even that look had cost him weeks of healing—something in him felt so broken, so betrayed, by the one person he loved more than anyone else. Yoojin won't even look at him, won't look anywhere but the gleaming surface of the oak table until the judge calls the courtroom to order._ _  
_ _  
_ _They all thought the trial might last a few days—they usually do, nothing is ever so cut and dry. But theirs doesn't. It lasts 8 grueling hours, because what and how much is there to be said about an officer who beats his partner to near death, and on purpose? For seemingly no reason? Even the defense makes it clear that they don't know, and don't want to know, and they only fight meekly for an insanity plea._ _  
_ _  
_ _"Why did you beat up your partner?" Jaebum's lawyer had asked, and Jaebum could only stare blankly ahead from his one good eye as Yoojin shook and near-cried through every answer._ _  
_ _  
_ _"I had to."_ _  
_ _  
_ _"Why?"_ _  
_ _  
_ _Jaebum wanted to know, too. He wondered if Yoojin was going to give a straight answer._ _  
_ _  
_ _"Something bad would happen to him if I didn't."_ _  
_ _  
_ _Of course not. Jaebum closed his eye._ _  
_ _  
_ _"What did you throw into the fire, Yoojin?"_ _  
_ _  
_ _"A picture."_ _  
_ _  
_ _"Of what?"_ _  
_ _  
_ _"I can't say. Jaebummie doesn't know."_ _  
_ _  
_ _After that, it was over. He had been on the stand for another maybe twenty minutes before they wrapped, and the jury went back. Then he could feel Yoojin finally looking at him, burning a hole into the side of his head, waiting for him to look over because he had something say, like he knew what was coming for him. But Jaebum wouldn't. He couldn't. There was nothing to be said that could make it better, nothing to be said that could change or make it go away. Yoojin had almost killed him for reasons unfathomable and after what happened to Taeyoung, he could not afford to break his heart again._ _  
_ _  
_ _When the jury came back barely five hours later, the guilty verdict fell on the air heavily. It was only 4 years—he didn't kill Jaebum, although he could have, but he was stripped immediately of his badge and title and was ostracized. If he was ever caught in the city limits of Seoul again, anywhere near Jaebum, he would go back to jail, and for even longer. Jaebum had closed his one good eye as the courtroom erupted in hushed chatter. And when the bailiffs came to take Yoojin away, his shackles rattling, Jaebum finally opened his eyes._ _  
_ _  
_ _All at once, Yoojin had exploded into life. "JAEBUM!" he screamed, so loudly that Jaebum jumped like he'd been shot. His good eye found Yoojin in a heartbeat, looking at his friend's panicked face. "JAEBUM, I'M SORRY!" he was screaming, positively howling, and Jaebum felt his heart seize in terror—what were they doing? Was this right? Should he have tried to defend Yoojin instead? Jaebum shot up out of his chair but was unsure what to do. He could only watch in disbelief as his friend bucked and kicked at the officers trying to take him back, a sudden wildness in him that hadn't been there before. "Jaebum, I'm sorry! I'm sorry  I didn't tell you! Jaebum!"_ _  
_ _  
_ _Then the doors had closed behind him, taking his terrified voice with him, and the possibility of ever finding out what happened, too.)_ _  
_  
Blinking, Jaebum returns to the present. Jinyoung and Mark are both watching him with comically matching looks of concern. He laughs a little shakily, that unsteadiness he felt the first day rising in his chest. "But I never found out what. That day—the day was convicted—was the last time I ever saw him."  
  
Mark's voice when he replies is gentle. "Do you think he came back to finally tell you?"  
  
Jaebum just looks at the tabletop, watching the motes of dust dance and swirl in the bars of sunlight. He tries to tell himself that it's okay that he never questioned it, and that the way that Yoojin's betrayal taught Jaebum to turn his heartbreak or discomfort into anger is, if anything, a blessing. He thinks for a moment, wondering for himself. What does he believe? After a moment, he sighs and closes his eyes. "Maybe. Either that or he came back because he wanted me to forgive him."  
  
"Do you forgive him?" Jinyoung asks.  
  
He doesn't mean to answer him: the questions is deep, too personal, too complicated; he hasn't even really asked himself that question yet. The only questions that he could have answered with any certainty before all this were _Do you hate him for what he did?_ Yes. _Do you feel like you know Kim Yoojin as well as you'd know your own brother?_ Yes.  
  
Now, though, he can't even answer those. The world feels like it's crumbling, everything that he knows to be true or based in fact uprooting itself like a tree in a storm.  
  
The uncertainty in his chest has the room feeling like its tilting, pulling the rug out from under his feet over and over, and his mouth answers before his brain can catch up. "I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever forgive him." Jaebum swallows, unable to look at either of them.  
  
"Okay, we're done for now," he says, and Jaebum feels relieved. "Mr. Park, thank you for coming in today." He sees Mark stand up and shake Jinyoung's hand out of his peripheral vision. "I'm sure this was quite the experience."  
  
"You could say that," Jinyoung says, and laughs in a voice like thick honey. "Detective?"  
  
Jaebum looks up. "Yes?"  
  
"Would you care to walk me outside? You look like you could use some fresh air."  
  
"Sure," Jaebum says, and nods quickly. He stands, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair and pulling it on. Mark and Jinyoung exchange a few more pleasantries while they wait on him, but his head is buzzing so loud that he can't really focus on it. Finally back in his coat, he nods to Jinyoung again and follows the other man out of the room.  
  
Side by side they walk through the bullpen, a few officers looking up at them absentmindedly before going back to their work. The station is mostly empty, with most people on patrol or looking into different aspects of Yoojin's case. Jaebum feels uneasy, his arm brushing Jinyoung's as he reaches past him to open the glass door of the police station when they reach it a moment later.  
  
Jinyoung looks like he wants to say something when they step out onto the stoop, both of them hesitating at the top of the stairs. Jaebum just watches him, unsure if _he_ should say something, or do something, like reassure him that he's fine and that the case will continue on like normal. He wants to know what Jinyoung's going to write about, or what his article will say, and he wants to ask about it to fill the awkward silence that steadily builds between them. He opens his mouth to ask, but instead he blurts out an apology. "I'm sorry."  
  
Jinyoung, for good reason, looks utterly shocked. "What?"  
  
It's a testament to how much Yoojin's death is really affecting him when he sighs and actually follows up with, "about Mark. The comment he made. He just likes to rile me up."  
  
"Oh, I didn't mind," Jinyoung replies easily, and then seems to realize what that might imply. A dark red blush creeps up his neck to the tops of his ears. Jaebum doesn't want it to be cute but it really, really is.  
  
Yeah. He's going crazy.  
  
"I just mean that it didn't bother me," Jinyoung says, still blushing madly. "Worse things have happened."  
  
Another few moments of a stiff silence pass between them, with Jinyoung looking at him and then away, toward his watch. Jaebum feels so _off-balance,_ like he's been dropped into some alternate universe or has turned into some bizarro world version of himself. The past couple of days have gone by in such a dream-like sequence of events that he's starting to wonder if any of it has even been real.  
  
Finally, out of nowhere, Jinyoung looks at him. "Do you want to get a drink sometime?"  
  
Jaebum startles. His eyes find Jinyoung's, and the seriousness in them makes him a little uneasy. He doesn't seem like he's joking in the least, and it makes Jaebum laugh a little nervously. "Are you being serious?"  
  
A little hurt, Jinyoung's face reddens. "Yes, I am, actually."  
  
He doesn't hate the idea as much as he wants to, but every interaction with Jinyoung so far has ended in an argument or just general exasperation, so he tamps down on it and pretends it didn't occur to him. "I don't know if that's a good idea."  
  
"Oh? Afraid you might like me?"  
  
"No," Jaebum grumbles, annoyed. "You're a reporter working on writing about the murder case I'm currently investigating. Adding dating into the mix would be bad news."  
  
There's a mischievous twinkle in Jinyoung's eye that Jaebum really doesn't like. This feeling is validated when Jinyoung says, "who said it was a date?"  
  
"Oh—come on," Jaebum rolls his eyes, sucking his teeth dismissively.  
  
"Look," Jinyoung says, reaching into his coat pocket for his phone. He pulls it out and dials a number before putting it up to his ear and continuing, "it's not a date. But the offer is on the table, if you want to take it." He interrupts himself to give an address, presumably to a cab company. When he hangs up, he looks at Jaebum with an expression that, again, is nerve-wrackingly hard for him to read. "I'm new to the city, and it would just be nice to make some friends."  
  
"Reporters and detectives rarely make good friends," Jaebum says, but with a surprising lack of malice. The idea of sitting across from Jinyoung at a small table in a dimly lit bar while they drink whiskey out of poorly-cleaned glasses appeals to him more than it should. It bothers him.  
  
"In your experience, maybe." Jinyoung tears off a piece of scrap paper from a notebook in his messenger bag and scribbles on it before handing it over. When Jaebum looks at it, there's a row of numbers lined up in impeccably neat handwriting, Jinyoung's name placed underneath. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize it's a phone number.  
  
"Is this—"  
  
"Yes," he interrupts, a small smile dimpling one of his cheeks. "That's my phone number. Like I said, the offer is on the table if you want it, and now you can call me if you do." The cab pulls up to the curb and honks for him. He nods and then goes down the stairs, only turning once when he gets to the cab to throw a brilliant smile over his shoulder. It's distressingly like the one from the previous night, and Jaebum thinks fleetingly that he's already tired of watching Jinyoung get into cabs.  
  
When it pulls away, Jaebum stares down in disbelief at the phone number in his hand. It's not that he's never gotten phone numbers before—with the way he looks, he's gotten plenty, and has had the one night stands to prove it. Part of him wants to throw the scrap paper away, an excuse of _we don't really know each other that well_ running through his mind, but he knows what a cop-out that is, and that someone as scarily intelligent as Jinyoung would see through that in a heartbeat. He wonders if Yoojin's death has, maybe, fundamentally changed him in some way already: Jinyoung is infuriating, unnecessarily apologetic and careful to mind his feelings, which is annoying. But whenever he talks, Jaebum can't help but watch the curve of his mouth and be overly aware of their proximity to each other, and it's barely been two days. If it's this bad already, it might only get worse. Maybe, and, he hopes this is true, he's just desperate for sex. He wonders if his reluctant acceptance of Jinyoung's abrupt and constantly annoying presence in his life is because he's actually starting to change, or because he just really, really needs to get laid.  
  
In any case, he folds Jinyoung's number carefully and puts it in his shirt pocket, where it proceeds to burn a hole for the rest of the day.

  
  
  
When he gets home later that night, he takes off his jacket and digs Jinyoung's phone number out of the pocket. He tosses the small scrap of paper into the bowl filled with keys and loose change on his entry table and tries to forget about it. Nora comes up to him almost immediately, big blue eyes begging him to pet her. As he leans down to run his hand over her soft head, he realizes how _tired_ he is--being a homicide detective for so long, that's not exactly a new feeling, but this exhaustion feels different; there's a destructive quality to it that makes his whole body feel like it's going to fall apart. Satisfied, Nora trots away from him, leaving him to stand blankly in the living room until he decides he should probably do something. Sighing quietly to himself, Jaebum pulls up his computer chair and opens his laptop, almost falling asleep while he waits for it to boot up. When it turns on, he decides to try and look into where Yoojin may have gone after he was released.  
  
The prison system doesn't keep track of their prisoners once they're released, and the files that the warden had sent him earlier in the morning didn't help much: he was released later in the day, around 6pm, and there wasn't anyone to pick him up. The thought makes Jaebum's heart drop a little bit-- _should I have been there?_ \--before he shakes off the feeling and continues. The prison supplied him with street clothes; the outfit he'd been arrested in was his police uniform, and besides it being covered in blood, he was no longer going to be wearing it. The last record the prison has of him is when the prison van dropped him off at a bus station 20 miles away, with strict instructions to go in the opposite direction of Seoul. From there, he's harder to track.  
  
He calls the bus station, hoping that they keep certain things on file for long periods of time, especially when it comes to freshly released criminals. But it was four years ago, and when an old-sounding woman answers the phone, he loses hope. "Seoul Express Bus Terminal."  
  
"Hello, this is Detective Im Jaebum with the Seoul District Police Department. Could I bother to ask you a few questions?"  
  
He loses hope further when she says, "how do I know you're really a detective?"  
  
"I guess you'll just have to take my word for it--"  
  
"Wait!" she exclaims. "You're that detective that is investigating that ex-cop's murder, aren't you?"  
  
Hope, just a tiny spark of it, leaps into his chest. "Yes, do you think you can help me?"  
  
"Maybe," she says, and he hears the clicking of computer keys. "What do you need?"  
  
"I'm looking to see what destination a certain passenger went to. It was four years ago, and the passenger was named Kim Yoojin. Do your files go back that far?"  
  
"Generally, no, but when the prisons drop off newly released prisoners to us, we're required to keep a history of where they go and if they come back," she says, and Jaebum nearly cries in relief. "Kim Yoojin..." she trails off, and he can faintly hear the furious clicking of the keys as she types. For someone who sounds so old, she can find information in a computer pretty damn fast. "Seems like the first day he was released, he went to Andomg. There's no history of him after that, except when he came back through the station to depart to Changwon about a year ago, and then a few months ago to Dangjin. That's the last record we have of him."  
  
_Changwon?_ Jaebum only feels more confused. _Who would he know that lives in Changwon?_ "Thank you," he says, and hangs up.  
  
Nothing makes sense. Andong doesn’t make sense, but if he was trying to just get off the map he might have picked somewhere random. Dangjin, at least, makes a little bit of sense--Dangjin is where Yoojin's grandparents lived, and it seems reasonable that he would go there and see them, if they're still alive. But for him to come back so closely to Seoul only to go to Changwon, where they don't know _anyone_ ... why? He puts both of his hands in his dark hair and pulls, frustrated to the point of tears. This case wasn't going to be easy, he knew, but he never could have imagined it would be this confusing. Yoojin, it seems, was not the person that Jaebum remembered him to be, and the feeling he had that first day comes back: should he be grieving, or should he be angry? The feeling threatens to tear him in half, and it dissolves his usually cool demeanor like acid. Who knew that the death of someone that he hasn't thought about in eight years could turn his world upside so easily.  
  
Without thinking, he pushes away from his desk and grabs the scrap of paper with Jinyoung's phone number on it out of the dish by the door. He stands there and stares at it in his palm for a minute, wondering if what he's about to do is really a good idea, or if he should do it at all. But the desperation that roars in his ears drowns out all the indecision, the uncertainty; he grabs his cellphone out of his pocket and dials the number. His heart slams against his ribs for reasons he can't put a finger on as the line rings.  
  
Doubt washes over him when it keeps ringing. How terrible of an idea is this? They've known each other for barely a couple of days and already they've called each other names; fought like they've known each other for years instead of hours. It unsettles him in the way that he can't decide if Jinyoung giving him his phone number makes him feel good or just makes him feel angry—what possible ulterior motive could he have for wanting to get close to Jaebum outside the case, if not to get answers he won't get otherwise? Jaebum couldn't even trust his best friend of over ten years, who's he to think he's going to trust a reporter he's met and talked to for two days? The line clicks like it's being answered, and the resolve in his gut not to get involved has him hanging up and throwing his phone angrily onto the table.

  
A couple of days pass with nothing new—the frustration only builds as they hit dead end after dead end on Yoojin's case. Jaebum had decided to go with Youngjae to talk to Bae Junhong after all, which was just another hopeless shot in the dark. All he could tell them was what they already knew: that Yoojin had, inexplicably, temporarily lost his mind.  
  
The visit hadn't lasted very long, either: Junhong live more or less in an okay neighborhood, which was to be expected. When he and Youngjae had parked Youngjae's cruiser outside the front of his house, Jaebum couldn't help but notice all the neighborhood kids scatter like mice. He wondered if it's because they had all been conditioned to be afraid of the police instead of expect help from them, and it had made him sad. He'd tried to let go of the thought once they were on the porch, and he had been nervous—as far as he knew, this was one of the last people that had directly talked to Yoojin before he died. It may have been five or six years ago, but it was still a step toward maybe finding out what happened, and he had dabbed at the sweat gathering at his temples despite the frigidity of the air. Youngjae had touched his arm, then, ready to say something to comfort him when Junhong opened the door.  
  
He'd recognized Jaebum immediately somehow, and there was a sneer firmly in place before they'd even introduced themselves. "Im Jaebum," he'd said, leaning on the door frame with one hand still on the doorknob. "Never thought I'd see your face again."  
  
Unsure of what to say to that, Jaebum had just pulled out his badge and shown it to him. "We have some questions about Kim Yoojin."  
  
Junhong had lead them inside and to his living room, where he sat across from them on a recliner. It was a pretty standard line of questioning—how he knew Yoojin, what had happened in prison when they knew each other. But Jaebum had been surprised when he finally asked what happened with their fight, and Junhong had only sighed heavily. His hand had come up to absently touch the scar that Yoojin's hand had left on him, and Jaebum could relate—sometimes, when the lighting is right, he'll catch the scar between his eyes where the skin never really pulled back together after Yoojin hit him. It was, in a distant way, strange and comforting to see the mark of Yoojin's anger on someone else.  
  
When Junhong was finally ready to answer, he looked down at his hands, his voice quiet. "I knew you in high school. Both of you. And I knew Taeyoung, but mostly just because of the two of you. I remember the way the three of you were always making a scene in the hallways, falling over each other and shoving one another and yelling, all that. I think back then I was just jealous—you were so handsome, got all the girls that you wanted but never seemed like you wanted them back." The man's dark eyes had flicked between Jaebum and Youngjae, like he was calculating his next sentence. Finally, he looked at Jaebum. "It was Yoojin who told everyone about you and Taeyoung, you know."  
  
Jaebum had swallowed, feeling Youngjae's eyes on him in surprise. He didn't, and still doesn't, know if he'd ever be ready to relive this. "I know."  
  
Junhong had sighed. "You had so many girls chasing after you that you didn't even want, and I couldn't even get one. So it was just jealousy, you know? And then I ended up in prison, which didn't surprise anyone. But the day Yoojin showed up on the yard, I couldn't believe it. He was cruel, when we were all younger. I hated you because you got what I wanted, I hated Yoojin because he was cruel, and I hated Taeyoung because he was friends with you. So when Yoojin showed up, looking almost the same but skittish and afraid, I still hadn't changed yet. I tormented him. I felt like I could finally get revenge on him, for all the things he did." Junhong hadn't looked up, voice thin. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Jaebum didn't want his apology because he didn't need it; didn't feel it was necessary. If anyone knew the extent of Yoojin's cruelty, it's him, and he'd been half tempted to apologize himself. Instead, he'd nodded and said, "I understand. Go on."  
  
"We had TV in prison, so of course I saw all over the news what he'd done, so I gave him hell about it. And he mostly ignored it, for a while. Kept to himself. The other inmates didn't like him either—they called him creepy. Didn't like the way he was always staring off into space, or pacing and muttering under his breath. His cell mate hated being anywhere near him—said at night Yoojin would get up and pace or would talk in his sleep. Muttering about 'Jaebum doesn't know', and 'I have to tell Jaebum about Taeyoung' and 'I'm sorry' over and over. Stuff like that. And I think that finally it just got to him. I said something about you—it's been so long that I don't remember now, I'm sorry. But it had been particularly awful. And the next thing I know I'm waking up in the infirmary because he's beaten my face in."  
  
His heart had started to slam against his ribs, his notepad completely forgotten in his lap. He hoped Youngjae was writing it all down. "Did he ever say what he was apologizing for? The cell mate?"  
  
Junhong shook his head. "No. Just always saying 'i'm sorry' over and over. Crying sometimes. After the fight, the doctors diagnosed him with some mental disorder. I don't know what, they wouldn't tell us. But they put him on meds, and he was...better after that. Not fine, because he still would talk in his sleep. But better." Junhong had looked up then. "I feel awful about what I did to him in there. The guy had mental problems, and I was just rubbing salt in a wound no one knew was there."  
  
Mentally ill. The possibility had Jaebum's knees shaking, and they'd left shortly after, the thought too much for him to bear. The thought is so encompassing that he hadn’t even noticed the way that Junhong had started to sweat–Jaebum, usually so attuned to even the smallest reactions, had missed this when he’d pushed himself up off the couch and out the front door. Youngjae had tried to get him to talk on the ride back to the station, but there wasn't anything to say: Jaebum wasn't any closer to the answers that he needed, and it had just brought up more and more unpleasant memories. Junhong hadn't been able to tell them anything else, and Jaebum doesn’t even consider that he had anything to do with Yoojin's death.

  
  
  
Now, a few days after their meeting with Junhong, Jaebum wonders if he's thinking too hard about this and if maybe, just maybe, Yoojin was just mentally ill.  
  
The thought comes to him in his office a few days later. Ever since Junhong had mentioned him getting puts on meds at the prison, Jaebum had chalked it up to mismanagement and that drugs would just make Yoojin complacent. But with each day that passes, more and more things drag themselves up from their past that seem to lend some sort of evidence to the theory that Yoojin might have been sick: the realization slams into him as though he'd been hit, and he has to shove himself violently away from his desk and stand up like the chair's on fire. His chest feels tight, and he has to lean a hand against the wall to keep himself from falling. If that's really what it had been—how could he not have seen it? Even when they were younger, all the incidents that he'd just glazed over because Yoojin was his best friend, all the fights and the late nights and the awful things that Yoojin had said or done. The incident with Taeyoung when they were fifteen; his death two years later, and Yoojin had seen it all. Could it have really been just because Yoojin was sick and no one knew? Did Yoojin know and tried to tell him but he wouldn't listen?  
  
_Yoojin is dead. Whose fault is it?_  
  
He's got his eyes closed when he hears a quiet knock on his office door, and he doesn't move to answer it. Doesn't know if he can. A few silent moments pass and then the door to his office opens, and then suddenly there's someone standing next to him with a warm hand on his arm. "Jaebum? Are you alright?"  
  
Jaebum's eyes squeeze shut tighter when he recognizes Jinyoung's voice. With the revelation that maybe Yoojin had been mentally ill and was just back in Seoul to try and talk to him again and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, dealing with his complicated emotions about reporter Park Jinyoung is the last thing he wants to be doing. There's an awful sort of feeling in his stomach when Jinyoung squeezes his arm and drops his voice impossibly lower, asking again, "Jaebum. Are you alright?"  
  
He can feel the sweat where it's gathered at his temples and plastered his dark hair to the skin. Jaebum opens his eyes but stays leaned against the wall, looking to see Jinyoung standing dangerously close and looking unfairly concerned. As if realizing he might be standing too close, Jinyoung removes his hand and backs away a little, but the concerned look in his eyes stays securely in place. Jaebum hopes his voice isn't shaky when he asks, "What are you doing here?"  
  
Jinyoung puts his hands in his coat pockets. "I just came by to see how it was going."  
  
Through the haze of his sudden realization about the possibility of Yoojin's mental state, he feels both amused and annoyed by this. "To see how what was going?"  
  
"The investigation."  
  
Jaebum, still sweating a little but more or less starting to come back to himself, leans up off his hand and turns to rest his back against the wall, folding his arms over his stomach to keep his hands from visibly shaking. "I don't have anything new for you to write about."  
  
There's an expression on Jinyoung's face that reads as slightly offended and maybe a little put-off, and Jaebum thinks they're finally headed in the right direction. "That's fine," he says, and the expression clears. "I didn’t come by looking for information."  
  
"You said you came by to see how the investigation was going," Jaebum says, eyeing the other man suspiciously. He hadn't noticed when he'd first opened his eyes to see Jinyoung in his office, but looking at him now he can tell that Jinyoung is dressed more casually than he usually is when he shows up for business—he's wearing a slightly too big pale t-shirt tucked into dark jeans cuffed to show off slim ankles. The black peacoat is the same, though today he's got it unbuttoned and unobstructed by his usual messenger bag. "And I told you. I don't have anything new for you."  
  
Sighing, Jinyoung slumps a little. "Fine. I lied. I came by to see how _you_ were doing."  
  
Jaebum swallows. He's not used to people being so tenacious about making sure he knows they care about him—maybe from Mark and Youngjae, but still, the two of them know him well enough to only show their concern for him in ways so subtle that he may not catch it. Jinyoung has been shamelessly open about caring about his wellbeing, and on top of making him uncomfortable, it makes him a little suspicious. "Why?"  
  
This earns him an eye roll which he distantly finds himself approving of. "This again?"  
  
Jaebum shifts, irritated. "Yes."  
  
"I don't know why you're so adamant about questioning me every time I ask if you're doing okay. You're a person. It's not illegal for me to ask if you're doing alright."  
  
"First, that's because you don't know me," Jaebum says, and he's a little amazed about how clear headed he feels now with Jinyoung in the room, standing a few feet away from him with his hands in his pockets and a defiant eyebrow raised. The realization shakes him a little—he falters, feeling himself redden when Jinyoung notices and the corner of his mouth pulls up handsomely. He continues anyway, trying to keep his uncertainty off his face. "Second, I'm a detective. I question people for a living."  
  
It wasn't really a joke, but it has Jinyoung bursting out into laughter. It sounds...genuine, rich and deep and musical, and Jaebum feels his stomach do something interesting when Jinyoung's hand comes out of his pocket to sweetly cover his mouth as he laughs. His eyes crinkle at the corners, nose scrunched up in a way that he finds himself admiring, and he really feels like he's been on a week long roller coaster. Jaebum, after experiencing so much heartbreak so early in his life, made rules for himself so that he would never be as vulnerable as he was when he was young. He made rules after his mother, so that he would become unbreakable; he made rules after Taeyoung, so that he would become unlovable; he made rules after Yoojin, so that he would become untouchable. All of the things that had stacked up against him to turn him into steel had given him the ability to be alone but never lonely. It made him smart about the company he keeps, which is, because of his own making, almost none.  
  
And so, because of the dreamlike and unreal week and a half he's been having, he does something stupid for the first time in twenty years.  
  
"Let's go get a drink."  
  
His voice when he says it is brusque, almost aggressive. Jinyoung stops laughing, the hand covering his mouth falling to around his chest area and hovering like he's not sure what to do with it. The look on his face is surprised, like he's afraid that Jaebum is going to say just kidding or start shouting at him. Silence presses between them as they just stare at each other, Jaebum's words hanging for so long that he starts to sweat a little. The door to his office is still open, and he glances at it nervously like he thinks someone's going to walk in on them and think that something major happened with the way they're just looking at each other in muted shock. But the bullpen is mostly empty, the only noise the soft sounds of keys being pressed as the officers that are there type up reports.  
  
A full minute passes, and Jaebum feels the dread turn his stomach to a rock. He opens to mouth to say sorry, or to take it back; he isn't sure which. But then Jinyoung is letting his hand fall all the way down to his hip, a tentative smile pulling up one side of his mouth. "Are you messing with me?"  
  
Weirdly relieved, Jaebum lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He slumps back a little against the wall, crossing his arms. "No."  
  
Jinyoung looks surprised again. "You really... you're really asking me to get a drink?"  
  
"Yes." Laconic. To the point, as always.  
  
Jinyoung smiles then, so wide it seems to split his face in half. It radiates happiness, and it's so genuine and self-satisfied that it almost hurts him to look at. He wonders off-handedly if his hesitance to call Jinyoung the other night was based in a gut feeling that this was going to end terribly, and that Jinyoung is going to get hurt.  
  
Because he will, inevitably, get hurt. By fate or by his own cruel design, Jinyoung will get hurt.  
  
They always do.  
  
Jinyoung seems to pick up on a change in his expression, because his smile drops and he looks worried. "Are you sure?"  
  
Jaebum ignores the twist in his stomach and just nods, looking away. "What time is it?"  
  
They look at their watches in unison, Jaebum's heavy Rolex on his right wrist and a simple black one on Jinyoung's left. Jinyoung answers first, shaking his sleeve back down. "Almost 5:30."  
  
Without looking at him, Jaebum grabs his coat and shoves it on. Before he can take it back, he starts to head out the door and beckons to Jinyoung to follow him. "Let's go, then. It's happy hour."

If any of the other officers in the building think anything of them leaving together, they don't mention it. None of them even look up from their desks, and Jaebum feels a little relieved that he doesn't have to awkwardly explain why he's taking a reporter to his car.  When they get into the parking lot, Jinyoung lets out a low whistle in appreciation as he walks around to the passenger side of Jaebum's car. It's nothing terribly special, as far as he's concerned: it's an older model, one that had been his father's in the 80's. His father rarely ever driving it but keeping it in pristine condition made it last, and now Jaebum only drives it to and from work to keep it in good shape. It's a dark, sleek looking car with a huge backseat and a bench-style front seat, the chrome embellishments on the inside reflecting both of their faces as they get in. "Wow," Jinyoung says, buckling his seatbelt and looking around the interior. He whistles again. _"This_ is a car."

Jaebum laughs a little. "It was my dad's. From the 80's."

"It's immaculate," Jinyoung says, and Jaebum pretends like he doesn't watch as the other man runs a delicate hand across the dashboard. Jaebum swallows, inexplicably nervous about their proximity like he always seems to be.

He feels Jinyoung looking at him looking at his hands, and he quickly focuses back on the road. He heads into the downtown area, slowing down when he hits traffic. "Do you know any good bars?"

Jinyoung laughs. "I'm not from here. Why would I know any good bars?"

A little embarrassed, Jaebum feels himself redden. "I don't drink much."

“Really? Isn’t it a given that being a detective means you have a bottle of whiskey in your desk that you drink late at night?”

Jaebum makes a face. “Ha, ha,” he says sarcastically, but the corner of his mouth lifts in a smile and Jinyoung laughs again. There’s a bar that Jackson had mentioned to him once before, a sort of hole-in-the-wall kind of place with low lights and is quieter and more intimate than other places. He doesn’t know if _intimate_ is really the setting they should be aiming for, but anywhere quiet enough to talk to each other and where he might not get recognized is a plus. It’s a few lights down, and Jaebum gets into the turn lane. “You shouldn’t perpetuate stereotypes.”

He can almost feel Jinyoung roll his eyes in the passenger seat, and he glances over to see Jinyoung already looking at him. “Says you, who is practically the walking definition of a stereotypical detective. Minus the drinking, I suppose.”

Jaebum looks away, and he pulls into the parking lot of the bar before he answers. “How so?”

“Oh, you know,” Jinyoung says, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Surly, kind of mean, obsessed--”

Jaebum barks a laugh. “Obsessed? How would you know I’m obsessed?”

“Please--it’s written all over you. Can I finish?”

They get to the front door of the bar, and just based on the outside Jaebum already thinks they made a good choice: the light outside is faint, throwing a yellowish glow over Jinyoung’s face when he looks up after Jaebum opens the door for him. He smiles, heading inside and disappearing into almost darkness. On the inside, practically the only lights in the place are behind the glass shelves lined with multicolored bottles of alcohol and in the terribly constructed lamps hanging over all the booths lining the walls. There’s a few more of the hanging lamps scattered through the center of the room and over some pool tables toward the back, but other than that the place is dim and quiet. Jaebum thinks that if he was an avid drinker, he’d never go anywhere but here.

Once they’re both seated at a booth toward the back and have ordered drinks (some citrus drink and a beer for Jinyoung and, stereotypically, whiskey and Coke for Jaebum), he puts his elbows on the table and sighs. “Anyways, continue.”

“What have I said already? Surly, mean, obsessed. You’re drinking a whiskey--”

“Only because you’re making me a stereotype.”

Jinyoung rolls his eyes and continues like he hadn’t interrupted. “You’re stressed, have a tragic past, and you’re working your best friend’s murder case. Sound about right?”

It’s not funny, per se, because it’s _accurate--_ he does have a tragic past and he _is_ working his best friend’s murder. But when Jinyoung puts it that way, it does seem a little funny and he finds himself chuckling. The waitress comes by and sets their drinks down, asking Jaebum if he needs anything else and winking at him before leaving. “Yes, you’re correct.”

“Was she flirting with you?”

Jaebum shrugs, picking up his whiskey and downing it with a neat flick of his wrist. Catching the girl’s eye, he signals for another one and a beer as well. “Maybe. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Sure, you weren’t,” Jinyoung says, but his tone is teasing, and he smiles at Jaebum around the straw of his drink. He can’t help but notice again the dimple in his cheek, and he looks away.

“So--” Jaebum starts, and he can’t believe how awkward he sounds. It’s not a date, but the awkward way he coughs and shifts in his seat has him feeling like it’s his first date all over again. “So. Changwon?”

Jinyoung finishes his drink fast, also motioning for another. “What about it?”

“Tell me about it.”

Jinyoung smiles, obviously happy that Jaebum is asking him a personal question, and Jaebum feels his stomach twist a little uneasily. Whatever is happening, it’s almost too comfortable; too easy. Their conversation starts naturally and something about it just feels... _normal,_ and he absentmindedly wonders if maybe he’s already feeling the alcohol and if getting drinks wasn’t a good idea after all.

“I was born there, and grew up there. I didn’t leave it much, though I’ve been to Seoul a few times. I went to college in Busan and then after I graduated, I went back to Changwon and helped my parents for a while before the Seoul Crime Report started. When I found out they needed people for unpaid internships, I jumped on the chance.”

He knows he shouldn’t, but Jaebum finishes his second shot of whiskey and asks for a third, picking up the beer he’d ordered and sipping it. “How old are you?”

“26.”

“Ahh, you’re younger than me.”

Jinyoung smirks at him, and Jaebum really doesn’t like the pleasant sensation it sends shooting into his stomach. “I think I could have guessed that, _ahjussi.”_

Mid-sip, Jaebum laughs and spits out some of his drink onto the table. Jinyoung squeals loudly, laughing as he starts to turn red and grab napkins to clean it up. Face hot, he says, “ahjussi? I’m barely 30.”

Jinyoung’s voice, when he answers, is silky smooth. “Do you prefer _hyung?”_

He stops wiping up the mess he made and looks at Jinyoung across the table, their eyes meeting. The atmosphere feels a little more charged than it did a few minutes ago, and Jaebum wonders if Jinyoung is purposefully looking at him with bedroom eyes or if it’s just because they’re both nervously downing their alcohol and blinding asking for more to ease the pressure. Either way, he swallows hard and pretends that he doesn’t notice Jinyoung watching the line of his throat when he does.

“Very funny,” he mumbles, and finishes wiping up the table.

When he leans back and wraps a hand around his beer, Jinyoung is looking at him a little too seriously for his liking, and it makes him miss the joking mood from just a moment ago. “What?” he asks warily, hoping that, whatever it is, it doesn’t have to do with the two of them.

Jinyoung sighs quietly, looking down into his half empty beer before seeming to decide the alcohol’s given him enough courage. “The day we met, do you remember?”

His stomach turns, and he hopes it doesn’t show on his face. Jaebum, surprisingly, doesn’t really want this to end--being in the bar with Jinyoung is refreshing. But if he’s going to ask a question about the _two_ of them, he’s not sure Jinyoung will like the answer. “Yes. I do.”

“The day we met, you told me something, and I really want to ask you about it.”

Jaebum nods, sipping his beer. He notices the movement of Jinyoung’s eyes on his mouth when he licks his lips, and he tries to keep a neutral expression even though it sends little pinpricks down his arms. “Sure. Go ahead.”

“You said that you had a friend who died. What happened?”

Even though he’s a little shocked, he’s mostly relieved--talking about Taeyoung in any capacity is beyond painful for him, even though it’s been almost thirteen years. There’s a lot of things about his past with Taeyoung that not even Mark or Youngjae know--and they’re his two closest confidants. Jaebum puts his drink down, sighing heavily. The alcohol makes his vision swim a little bit, and he grips the edge of the table with one hand. Whether to keep himself upright or just to make himself feel grounded as he decides on whether or not he can answer that question, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, chasing his thoughts further and further down the rabbit hole until he finally decides on an answer.

“It’s a long story.”

“We have time,” Jinyoung says softly, and when Jaebum looks up at him, there’s an unfairly sympathetic look on his face. Jaebum almost wishes that he was looking at him with those bedroom eyes instead. “But only if you want to.”

“Not a lot of people know,” he says, and once he starts he doesn’t stop. “About what happened to Taeyoung, I mean. I met Yoojin when I was ten, when his family moved into the neighborhood from Dangjin. My mom had just passed away about a year before that, and I was living with my grandparents in an older neighborhood that didn’t have a lot of kids.”

Jinyoung’s face looks sad, and Jaebum finds himself wishing that they weren’t having this conversation and that he could say something to make it disappear, and to make that eye-crinkling smile come back. “I’m sorry. Where was your dad?”

“He died when I was a year old.” Seeing the look on Jinyoung’s face, he brazenly reaches across the table to pat his hand and pulls it back sharply. “It’s alright. So when Yoojin moved to the neighborhood, there was finally a kid my age I could hang out with outside of school. We got close really, really fast. Then a couple months later, another family moved in a couple of streets over from us. Yoojin and I saw him and his little brother walking one day, and we started talking to them. We met Taeyoung mostly by chance, but he integrated himself into our group pretty seamlessly.”

He tries not to think about it, but this is a very dangerous road for him to be on. Jaebum doesn’t forget that Jinyoung is a reporter, and that he could quote anything that Jaebum is saying or take it and publish it in the papers, but it’s a testament to his willingness to do something dumb for once in his life that he lets the story out to a stubborn reporter on blind faith. He can feel Jinyoung’s eyes on him, but he keeps his gaze directed at the table or on the line of Jinyoung’s knuckles where his hands are folded around his beer glass when he continues.

“Taeyoung and I...we were close. Not closer than Yoojin and I, but close in a different way. When we were thirteen, three years after we’d met, Taeyoung was at my house studying when he came out to me. At first, I was a little worried. I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time, and I was terrified of what everyone else would say. So I told him not to tell anyone but me, and that we couldn’t ever tell Yoojin.

“And he didn’t. Not for a long time, at least, and I was the only one who knew. Yoojin and Taeyoung fought a lot. Some of it was brotherly, but sometimes it was awful. Real. They’d get in shouting matches at my house or at the park or during soccer practice. They fist fought a few times, but they always made up after. When it was just the two of us, me and Yoojin or me and Taeyoung, I’d ask them about it. If they hated each other, for some reason, but they both always said no. So they loved each other, in their way. But most of the time it was ugly, and for no real reason. Just different people, I guess.

“Taeyoung still hadn’t told anyone he was gay. When I...” Jaebum stops, swallowing hard. It’s always so easy to talk about his memories of Taeyoung before he died; how seamlessly they were as a group and how well-fitting he and Jaebum were, as a unit separate from that of the three of them or him and Yoojin. But when it gets to this part, he always falters. He pushes himself to continue. “When I started to realize that I had feelings for guys as well as girls around fourteen, maybe a year or so after Taeyoung came out to me, he was the first person I told. At first, the relief on his face confused me--I didn’t know why he’d want that to happen to me; I’d cleaned him up after someone kicked his ass more times than I could count. But then he told me that he’d had a crush on me. Since we’d met, even. And I... I was still a little confused. Being fourteen and liking girls _and_ boys was still so weird that I didn’t know what to do. But Taeyoung kissed me, and it just felt right.” He smiles awkwardly. “That probably sounds stupid.”

There’s an almost pained tint to Jinyoung’s expression, and Jaebum’s heart squeezes. “No, it doesn’t,” Jinyoung reassures him, voice softer than it has reason to be. He swallows.

“When Taeyoung and I started to spend more time alone together, Yoojin got jealous. More jealous than when we’d spent time together in the past, and I think it’s because he knew. About both of us, even though we swore to never tell him unless we felt like he was ready. But I don’t think he would have ever been ready. He was angry a lot--he fought more with Taeyoung, and tried to pick fights with me, but I was always so steadfast and calm that he would give up when I wouldn’t fight back. But then he told everyone about Taeyoung and I.”

He closes his eyes as he remembers it. The way everyone had whispered as he and Taeyoung had walked down the halls, looking at each other in confusion, with Yoojin nowhere to be found. He remembers the names they’d been called, the people who’d thrown things at them; he remembers the fight with Yoojin on his porch that night.

“That’s when we were fifteen, and Taeyoung and I had been dating for almost a year. Secretly. Even though we were young, we were utterly convinced we were in love with each other. Kids are kids. They whispered about us, called us names, threw shit at us. Yoojin hadn’t showed up to school that day. Taeyoung was devastated--the kids we went to school with had younger brothers around his own brother’s age, and he knew that it would get back to his brother, and to his family. I’d never seen Taeyoung cry before, but he cried so hard that day. He was wrecked. Convinced his family was going to throw him out.

“I was angry. I knew it had been Yoojin, because that’s just how he was--he could be funny and caring, but he knew how to be awful and vindictive as well. Even though he’d only known me a couple of months more than Taeyoung, he felt like I belonged to him, I guess. Either way, I called him to my house that night.”

Jinyoung watches him as he tells the rest of the story, his heart thudding painfully in his chest as he relives it even as he says the words.

“It was late evening, and I couldn’t really see his face as he came up the porch steps. But just by the line of his shoulders, I could tell he was angry. Angry, maybe a little afraid. But mostly angry. And I remember closing the door and asking him, ‘Why did you do that?’ before he even had the chance to say anything to me. And in his usual fashion, he had leaned against the one of the pillars on my front porch and stared at me, his black hair tucked behind his ears and his dark eyes on fire.”

_“Do what?” He’d asked, arms crossed angrily over his chest, but Jaebum knew him too well to fall for it--he knew that underneath his arms, his hands were shaking._

_“Why did you tell everyone?”_

_“So it’s true, then?”_

_Jaebum had felt the anger rise in his chest, so fast and so hot it felt like acid. “Does it matter if it’s true or not? We’re your best friends,” he spat, so viciously that Yoojin had looked surprised. “_ He’s _your best friend.”_

_Yoojin wiped  the surprise from his face. “If you were really my best friends, wouldn’t you have told me?”_

_It hurt, undoubtedly it hurt. But Jaebum had just looked back at him fiercely. “Would you have gotten it any more than you do now?”_

_Yoojin had opened his mouth to reply, but seemed to realize that Jaebum was right. They’re barely fifteen. Jaebum hadn’t_ expected _him to understand. But the fact that he didn’t, and still didn’t at that moment, was agonizing. “He doesn’t deserve you.”_

_“What?”_

_“Taeyoung doesn’t deserve you, Jaebum.”_

_“Oh, what, but you do?”_

_“No, I’m not a queer,” Yoojin had spat at him, and Jaebum felt it as though he’d been hit. “But you deserve better.”_

_“You don’t get to decide that.”_

_Yoojin had looked away, dark hair coming untucked. Without looking back, he’d said, “I did tell everyone. You’re right. And I’d do it again.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because,” Yoojin said, and when he finally looked back at him after looking away for a few moments, Jaebum had was horrified to realize that he barely recognize the person in front of him. Five years and here was a side of Yoojin that he’d never experienced himself--dark, anxious, picking a fight. The word Jaebum used to describe the look in his eyes to his grandmother had been “evil”. And the next words that came from his mouth had only served as evidence that he may have been right: “It was fun.”_

_Anger had taken him by the throat then. Jaebum had launched himself at his best friend, not realizing that he was screaming until he’d had Yoojin underneath him struggling to push him off. “Why would you do that?” he’d screamed again, grabbing Yoojin’s shirt collar and nearly falling when it ripped._

_Yoojin had looked afraid, then. “Jaebum, I’m sorry--”_

_“You know how I feel about him!” And then, before he could stop himself, Jaebum punched him so hard in the face he felt the bone crack underneath his fist. Yoojin had screamed so loud that his grandmother had woken up, and she’d had to pull a crying Jaebum off of a crying Yoojin and call emergency services. Jaebum had only watched the ambulance as it took Yoojin away, standing on his porch until it got too cold to be outside._

Jaebum slumps against the back of the seat of the booth, already exhausted from talking. He can’t bring himself to look at Jinyoung’s face--it’s not a moment that he’s proud of, and it’s part of the reason that he never tells anyone about Taeyoung. He goes quiet for a moment, vision blurry. The alcohol really hits him, then, and he realizes that he’s just told almost half of his life story to someone who’s barely a step above a stranger. But he can’t stop there, and he knows he’s drunk when he just sighs and continues without bravado.

“It was a while before we all talked to each other again. Two years later, when we were seventeen and two years after that whole episode, Yoojin and Taeyoung were in an accident. I wasn’t there, and Yoojin would never talk about it, so I still don’t know what happened. But Yoojin had showed up at my house dazed and covered in Taeyoung’s blood, just mumbling over and over that it was an accident. Turns out he’d been driving too fast and hit something in the road--Taeyoung hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and he’d gone through the windshield. The glass cut his face open, but the impact had broken his neck. He’s lucky he didn’t go to jail, but Taeyoung’s family knew that Yoojin hadn’t meant to do it. And...” he hesitates for a moment before realizing that, after Taeyoung died, there had been nothing else. “That’s it.”

Jaebum hasn’t looked at Jinyoung’s face in what feels like hours, but was probably only about thirty minutes. He’s staring at the table, expecting Jinyoung to realize that his past is _really_ tragic and to get up and never speak to him again, so he’s surprised when he feels Jinyoung’s warm hand gently touch his wrist.

“Jaebum,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that Jaebum can’t identify, something like horror and grief and anger mixed with the soft desperation of offered comfort. It almost makes his chest hurt. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t look up. Jaebum is just staring at where Jinyoung’s hand is on his wrist, the younger man’s fingers slightly curled and just barely brushing against his pulse point. But he can feel it, and every featherlight touch of Jinyoung’s fingers on his wrist sends heat coursing through his veins until he feels like the booth’s on fire. When he finally looks up into Jinyoung’s eyes, the look in them sends the heat pouring into his gut: he’s never seen anyone look so pitifully, desperately beautiful. The bedroom eyes are back, but there’s lines of tension in the younger man’s face that tell Jaebum he’s trying very hard not to show it.

“We should go,” he finally says, and he hates the way his stomach feels empty when he moves his wrist out from under Jinyoung’s fingers.

 

Both of them are too drunk to drive, so they lean against each other outside as they wait for a cab. The mood is a little brighter, thankfully--Jaebum thinks that if maybe he drank a little more, he wouldn’t be such an asshole all the time.

“I’m sorry about all that,” he says after hanging up, and Jinyoung looks up at him. There’s still a hint of tension: Jaebum can feel the heat of Jinyoung’s shoulder pressed against his own, and the way Jinyoung’s eyes flick from his eyes to his mouth is less than subtle. But he doesn’t address it, instead trying to smile. “That was a lot of personal information that you didn’t need to know right away.”

Jinyoung shrugs, dark eyes lingering on Jaebum’s mouth for longer than they should when he finally realizes he’s caught and looks away, turning a little red. “It’s alright. I feel like you won’t hate being in the same room as me as much anymore now that we know each other.”

He’s not entirely wrong, but he doesn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that. “Who says I hated being in the same room as you?”

Jinyoung rolls his eyes, but the smile comes back, and Jaebum hastily pushes away the thought of how badly he wants to kiss the dimple that appears in his cheek. “Your body language.”

“You’re very observant,” Jaebum says, holding open the door of the cab to let Jinyoung in as when it arrives.

As they settle in, Jaebum can’t help but notice that the back seat of the cab is much smaller than the front seat of his car, and they’re sitting very close. Jinyoung leans forward to hang over the barrier to talk to the driver, and Jaebum glances down at the strip of exposed skin at Jinyoung’s back. He closes his eyes, trying to remind himself that the only reason he’s noticing is because he’s drunk and hasn’t had sex in a very long time. But then Jinyoung is leaning back, turning his head to say something to him and stopping when he realizes how close they are. A smirk widens across his face.

They look at each other for a moment, until Jaebum finally can’t help it: he cracks a smile, scoffing when Jinyoung crows in triumph.

They chat for a bit as the cab winds through the heavy traffic, giving Jinyoung plenty of time to talk Jaebum’s ear off for a change. He’s vaguely aware of their proximity the entire time: he doesn’t know if Jinyoung is paying attention or not, but his skin grows more and more sensitive every time he feels Jinyoung’s thigh press against his own when he moves, or when their arms brush as Jinyoung talks with his hands. They’re down the street from Jaebum’s apartment, Jinyoung in the middle of a story from when he was in high school about some art project gone awry or another, when the cab driver curses loudly and slams on his brakes. He swerves violently to avoid a car pulling away from a parking spot, and neither of them are wearing a seatbelt in the cramped back seat. Jinyoung yelps in surprise as he’s thrown against Jaebum, one hand going out to catch himself and gripping Jaebum’s thigh to support himself as the cab driver rights the car and leans out the window to shout at the other driver. His thighs have always been a little sensitive, and he can’t help the groan that escapes his mouth when he feels Jinyoung’s fingertips digging into the inside of his thigh.

Jinyoung looks at him, and Jaebum looks back, Jinyoung’s hand still firmly in place even as the cab driver pulls up to the curb outside the front of Jaebum’s apartment building. The backseat of the cab is rife with tension now: Jinyoung slides his hand up a little bit, and the sensation of the younger’s fingertips traveling up his thigh has him biting down on his lower lip against another groan. Jaebum looks up at him, and Jinyoung’s eyes are hooded and heavy with a desire that, based on how he’s looking at him, is rival to Jaebum’s own.

“Do you--”

“Can I--”

“Yeah,” they breathe at the same time, and Jaebum is hastily passing money  to the cab driver before the both of them are spilling out of the cab and into the lobby of his apartment building.

They’re both still drunk, and Jinyoung laughs when he stumbles and almost falls into the massive glass door of Jaebum’s apartment building. Jaebum’s mouth dries up when he feels Jinyoung standing behind him as they wait for the elevator, his hands hovering around Jaebum’s hips but not quite touching yet. It’s still a little awkward--they both tumble into the elevator, Jinyoung asking him what floor and bending over to press the button in a way that has Jaebum wondering both if he did it on purpose and how much he could get away with doing to him in an elevator. Jinyoung turns to him as the elevator goes up, eyes on his mouth again, and Jaebum reaches out to put a finger in Jinyoung’s belt loop and pull him closer so that their hips are almost touching. This close, he can see the movement of Jinyoung’s shoulders as he breathes unevenly, and Jaebum can’t help but think of how unfair it is that Park Jinyoung could waltz into his life and completely turn it more upside down than it already was.

By the time the elevator stops on Jaebum’s floor, they’re both getting handsy. Jaebum leads Jinyoung down the hallway briskly with a hand on his lower back, and Jinyoung leans into the touch with an arm around Jaebum’s waist and already trying to untuck his dress shirt. He pulls Jinyoung’s hand away to unlock the door, immensely enjoying the pathetic little whine he lets out when his hand is removed from Jaebum’s hip.

They’re all hands once they’re inside Jaebum’s apartment with their shoes kicked off. Jaebum pushes Jinyoung up against the door, caging him in with one hand on either side of his head. Jinyoung’s hands are on his waist, pulling at the dress shirt tucked into his dark slacks and breathing unevenly. Jinyoung’s eyes flick up to his, pupils wide, and in the dim light from the kitchen Jaebum watches as the younger man licks his lips. Jinyoung looks like he’s going to say something, but then Jaebum is angling his head down and pressing his mouth against Jinyoung’s.

The give is immediate, and Jinyoung willingly gives up control when he parts his lips beneath Jaebum’s and whines when he licks into his mouth. The kiss is wet and sloppy, but the heat of it sends sharp strokes of pleasure through Jaebum’s stomach, and it picks up in intensity when Jaebum pushes against Jinyoung’s body with his own. The hard lines of their erections touch when Jaebum presses closer, and the both of them let out soft noises of pleasure that has Jinyoung’s hands coming up to tug on Jaebum’s hair. He growls into his mouth when Jinyoung pulls teasingly, one hand coming up off the dark wood of the door to grab a handful of Jinyoung’s ass. The shudder that goes through Jinyoung’s body when he does it has their hips bumping together, and the friction from Jinyoung’s jeans against the soft material of his slacks pulls a groan out of him. Jinyoung’s hands move from his hair and starts working on unbuttoning his shirt, gasping quietly when Jaebum kisses a line from his mouth to his jawline. Once Jinyoung gets the buttons undone, he’s tilting his head to give Jaebum better access to his neck and urgently pushing at Jaebum’s shoulders.

Jaebum ignores it in favor of sucking a mark into the spot underneath Jinyoung’s jaw where the skin of his neck meets his ear. Jinyoung moans, his hips grinding into Jaebum’s impatiently, both his hands fisted in the collar of Jaebum’s unbuttoned dress shirt. Jinyoung’s hips buck into his when Jaebum uses his teeth, other hand pulling at the loose neck of Jinyoung’s t-shirt to give Jaebum more access to his shoulder. Whining, Jinyoung rolls his hips again, both of them hard and straining against their pants.

“Jaebum-ah,” Jinyoung pants, voice wavering in desperation. “C’mon, let’s go--”

Without saying anything, Jaebum pulls Jinyoung forward by the collar of his shirt, sealing their mouths together again as he blindly pulls Jinyoung into his bedroom. Still using the collar of Jinyoung’s shirt as a lead, he turns them and pushes Jinyoung roughly onto the bed, smirking in satisfaction when Jinyoung’s eyes widen. Jinyoung reaches up as Jaebum positions himself over Jinyoung’s hips, using one knee to spread  the younger’s legs apart. He pushes at the shoulder’s of Jaebum’s dress shirt, nearly ripping it trying to take it off. Jaebum leans up to let it slide off his shoulders slowly, grinning when Jinyoung whines and thrusts his hips up.

“C’mon, you asshole,” Jinyoung breathes, running a hand down Jaebum’s bare chest and settling on his belt, where he deftly starts to undo the buckle one-handed. “Fuck me or I’m leaving.”

The image of Jinyoung underneath him and expertly undoing his belt one-handed has heat coursing through Jaebum’s stomach, and he bites down on his bottom lip. The thought of Jinyoung walking out in the middle of them about to get it on has Jaebum dipping down and rolling his body into Jinyoung’s, who reaches up to grab his hair with one hand and pulling his belt through the loops with the other. Jaebum impatiently motions for Jinyoung to sit up, and he yanks his shirt over his head and drops it unceremoniously to the floor next to his belt. Jaebum keeps kissing him as they shed the rest of their clothes, almost unwilling to move away from his mouth like he’s never going to get to kiss him like this again. The hard line of Jinyoung’s dick presses against the bone of Jaebum’s hip, and he reaches down with one hand to wrap his fingers around it and pull gently. The touch is electric--Jinyoung’s hips come off the bed, rolling up into his hand and whining. Jaebum jerks him off slowly, sucking another mark into the almost sinfully perfect line of Jinyoung’s collar bone. He feels his own dick slide against the inside of Jinyoung’s thigh, and the wetness at the tip has Jinyoung shaking with anticipation.

“Fuck--” Jinyoung says, and eyes squeezing shut. “I want you to--”

Jaebum wouldn’t call himself a nun, but he’s not reckless with sex, either, so it’s a testament to his drunken state when he reaches into the beside table to grab lube but completely bypasses the condoms. Jinyoung doesn’t seem to mind, his breath coming in uneven pants punctuated by soft moans and curses when Jaebum does something particularly pleasing with his mouth. Jaebum is almost painfully hard when he slowly starts to finger Jinyoung open, watching as Jinyoung practically falls apart underneath him from just his hands. By the time he finally lines up and pushes in, Jinyoung is begging. Both of his hands come up to Jaebum’s shoulders, his blunt nails digging in and sending sharp lines of pleasure down Jaebum’s spine as he starts to pick up the pace.

It’s a little uneven because he’s drunk, but the way Jinyoung rolls his hips down to meet Jaebum’s thrusts on the upstroke has the both of them panting and pawing at each other; Jinyoung drags his nails down Jaebum’s back when he starts to thrust into him harder, the headboard above them every so often hitting the light wall of Jaebum’s bedroom. The harder he fucks into him the more noise he makes, each breath punching out of him intermingled with broken off swears or pleas of _yes, like this_ or _harder, fuck, harder_ and even some awful-sounding English curse words. Jaebum reaches down and runs a hand down Jinyoung’s stomach, the sweat from both of them gathering near his navel.

“Christ, you’re noisey,” Jaebum finally breathes out, grinning when he wraps a hand around Jinyoung’s cock again and Jinyoung almost screams. He pumps his hand a few times, his hips snapping up into Jinyoung almost violently now, and Jinyoung barely has time to warn him when he comes across his stomach, hips lifted off the bed and filth spilling from his mouth. The sight of Jinyoung absolutely losing it beneath him sends heat pooling in his gut, sweat plastering his hair to his temples and running down his neck into his collarbones. Jinyoung reaches up, grabbing a fistful of Jaebum’s hair and using it to pull himself up so that their mouths meet, teeth clicking and tongues sliding together. It’s sloppy, hot and messy and wet, but Jinyoung biting down on his lower lip has his orgasm finally tearing through him and he shudders out a moan so deep he can feel it in his chest.

He pulls out, leaning over to the other nightstand and grabbing a clean towel folded up in the bottom drawer. Still drunk, he haphazardly cleans himself off and then hands the towel to Jinyoung. Now drunk _and_ exhausted, he collapses on his side next to Jinyoung, who’s already looking at him. There’s a strange expression on his face, and again Jaebum has the strange feeling of not being able to read someone like he usually can. He’s about to ask when Jinyoung’s expression clears, turning into one that’s soft and fond.

“You’re not going to make me leave, are you?” Jinyoung asks, and although his voice sounds playful, Jaebum knows that there’s a hint of seriousness behind the question. His heart contracts when he realizes that it’s his reality--he told Jinyoung this wasn’t a date, but then he ended up getting drunk and spilling half his life story and bringing Jinyoung back to his apartment to fuck him without really thinking of the aftermath. But something in him whispers that he doesn’t want Jinyoung to leave, anyway.

“I probably should,” he says, honest as always. When Jinyoung’s eyes widen, he puts a hand on Jinyoung’s hip in reassurance. “But no. I’m not.”

Despite being drunk and sated, the look of happiness on Jinyoung’s face is almost too good to be true. He falls asleep a few minutes later, and Jaebum pretends that he doesn’t feel satisfied when Jinyoung’s peaceful face is the last thing he sees when he closes his eyes.

 

_When the dream starts again, something about it feels different: instead of the usual eerie silence, there’s a whispering sound, like thousands of hushed voices overlapping as it rushes by his ears like wind. It’s too jumbled and distorted for him to make anything out, and as he approaches the still familiar house, dread builds up in his chest. It’s almost scarier than the silence, and as he ducks under the crime scene tape like he’s done a hundred times over, he finds himself wishing for it._

_Blood still stains the ground in massive, arcing fans, as though someone had filled a power-washer full of blood and sprayed it on the sidewalk. Here, for the first time in months, the dream changes: instead of looking away from it, Jaebum looks directly at it. The stark red against the dirty, off-white of the concrete sidewalk is bright, and it gleams in the muted sunshine of his dream like it’s fresh. He feels himself bend down, crouching at the edge of one of the slowly moving puddles. The whispering gets louder, more discordant, and the sweat gathered at his temples starts to trail down the sides of his face. Reaching out, he skirts his fingers along the mess of blood, and his heart takes a dive in his chest when it’s hot against his fingertips. That same, indescribable horror creeps up his back as he watches the way small drops of the blood leak from his fingers and ripple in the pool of it at his feet as though it were water. Tearing his eyes away, Jaebum looks back up at the house: still the same, familiar to the point of frustrated tears, with blood on the steps and the plants on the railing. The steps, all four of them, with a crack in the wood of the second one from the top. Something shifts in the back of his mind, and there’s the flash of an image across his vision of how the crack got there but then it’s gone again. The plants, too, tickle the back of his mind: lined up by color order of their pots, largest to smallest. He knows that’s why they’re in that order. But why? And the dog--he turns to look at the dog, to see if it does the same thing, but it’s missing from its usual place by the door._

_For the first time, Jaebum speaks in the dream._ Where is the dog?

_No one answers him._

Where is the dog?

_His eyes go to the spot on the porch where the ceramic dog should be, knowing inherently that it is missing. Somehow the nightmare gets worse, and the horror spreads from his back into his chest. Paralyzed by the pool of blood with his eyes fixated on the spot by the door where he knows the dog should be, the whispering gets louder and louder until it’s incoherent, like screaming, and Jaebum goes to stand._

Where is the dog? _He screams, but still no one answers him. He stands rooted to the spot with his hand held away from him as endless blood still drips from his fingers though it should have dried by now. His heart slams fearfully against his ribcage as his mind works faster and faster--there should be dog there, a border collie, with black eyes, black as night, why do I know this place, everything else is here, the plants, the blood, where is the dog--_

_Suddenly, the discordant voices stop, utterly and completely, dropping him into that horrible and yet familiar silence. There’s not even a faint static sound when they go--only the tight feeling like all the air had been sucked from the room. As he stares at the place where the dog should be, a sudden voice, one he’s heard a million times over, whispers in his ear._

_Jaebum._

He jerks awake, crying out when his wrist slams painfully against the bedside table. Sweat plasters his hair to his face and to the back of his neck, and he can feel it where it drips down his bare back. The blanket pools around his waist, and he frantically looks around the dark room as though he’s never seen it before. His chest expands and contracts in great heaving gasps, the dream replaying itself against his eyelids when he squeezes them shut, forward and backward. The headache comes next, pounding against both temples and against the backs of his eyes like his head is stuffed with cotton. He doesn’t even remember that there’s someone else in the bed with him until he feels a hand on his back.

“Jaebum?”

Still caught up in the undertow of the dream, he jumps and twists away, terrified. His heart slams against his ribs much like it had been in the dream, and though he realizes he’s awake now, the barrage of thoughts won’t stop, and his mind is working fast, so fast--he has to get up, get out of the room, turn the light on, something. He throws the blanket off, distantly realizing he’s still naked but still too confused and shaken up to think anything of it. There’s a pair of cotton shorts draped across the back of a chair by the window, and he tugs them on before throwing open the curtains and pacing back and forth. He doesn’t even realize that it’s morning until he turns his head toward the window and has to squint into the harsh light of the sun.

The dream being different this time, after months and months of always being the exact same, has to mean something. He starts to come down a little, still sweating and shaking but less wild and terrified than he had been when he’d first woken up. Jaebum doesn’t even seem to remember that Jinyoung is in the room until he tries speaking again.

“Jaebum?”

He stops pacing, the sun warming him and slowly starting to dry the sweat on his back. Jinyoung is sitting up in the bed, shirtless with the blanket pulled up and tucked around his hips. One of his eyes is squinted shut against the light coming in through the window, and Jinyoung lifts a hand from the bed to shield his eyes against it. “What’s wrong?”

“The dog was missing.”

Jinyoung puts his hand down when Jaebum shifts to block the sun with his back, the younger man’s dark eyes wide and confused now. “What?”

“The dog was missing. The little ceramic dog by the door. It was gone.”

There’s a spark in his mind, now; it’s small, but it’s there. He grasps at it blindly.

“Jaebum, I don’t know what that means. Are you okay?”

Something important is coming to him, he can feel it, and he doesn’t have time to explain. “The dog that was always by the door, it was gone this time. And the blood on the ground was wet when I touched it--”

“Blood?” Jinyoung’s voice cracks as it raises a few octaves in alarm. “Jaebum, what are you talking about?”

He had started pacing again, but he stops when he remembers crouching down in the dream and looking up at the stairs. The third one, second from the top, was cracked on the left side. The wood was strong, but it was old, and when Yoojin had just barely made it over them on his skateboard, the wheel had caught and cracked the wood. The memory powers through him, almost physically rocking him back on his heels. They had been, what, eleven that year? Barely friends for a year when Yoojin had asked him to go on vacation with his family. All they did was skateboard and stay out until the sun went down, and he remembers the way that Yoojin had broken his arm that night, when he tried to do a skateboard trick on the stairs in the dark but had cracked the wood instead and had fallen.

“Yoojin,” Jaebum whispers, eyes wide and fixed on Jinyoung’s confused and frightened face when the realization strikes him like lightening.

The voice, at the end of the dream, had been Yoojin’s.

Jaebum runs from the room, ignoring Jinyoung’s confused shout after him. He digs for his phone in his coat pocket where it had been thrown over the back of the couch the night before, and he anxiously scrolls through it until he finds who he’s looking for. He dials Youngjae’s number, leaning against the couch as the line rings.

“Hullo?”

“Youngjae,” Jaebum breathes, feeling fifteen kinds of relieved. “Youngjae, I figured something out.”

Where it had been sleepy a moment ago, Youngjae’s voice is alert now. “What? What do you mean? About Yoojin?”

“Sort of,” he says, and with the revelation he feels the frantic terror finally leave him. Adrenaline still rushes through him, his heart beating too fast, and he goes to sit down on the couch to try and calm down a little bit. “The dream, remember the dream I’ve been having?”

“I don’t know that I’d call it a _dream_ more than a nightmare,” Youngjae says, yawning. “But yes. What about it?”

“Remember how I told you the house was always so familiar to me, but I could never figure out why?”

“Yes.” Youngjae pauses for a moment. “Jaebum, is this really why you called me at 7 a.m?”

Startled, he pulls the phone away from his ear to look at the time when it lights up. The small clock at the top of the screen reads 7:24 a.m. Putting the phone back to his ear, he huffs apologetically. “Sorry. But, yes, it is, but there’s something more to it.”

“I’m listening.”

“The dream was different this time. I won’t go into it, but it was different. And when I woke up, so much came back to me, and I realized--Youngjae, I know why that house is familiar. It’s Yoojin’s grandparents’ house in Dangjin.”

“Oh,” Youngjae says, almost as though he’s let down, but then seems to realize what that might mean. _“Oh.”_

“Yeah,” Jaebum says, looking up when Jinyoung appears at the doorway to his bedroom. “I think we need to go talk to them. Youngjae, they might know something.”

“Are they even still alive?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and deflates a little. He actually doesn’t--after Yoojin had gone to jail, Jaebum had said goodbye to Yoojin’s parents in the courtroom and had never seen them again. He knows that they both died in the past eight years, both of them to health issues, but never knew the details. The only time Jaebum had ever even met Yoojin’s grandparents was that summer when they visited and Yoojin broke his arm on the stairs. “But if they are, they might know something.”

“Do you want to go talk to them? Or do you want me to go and take Jackson?”

Jaebum stands up suddenly, eyes on Jinyoung’s face as the younger man leans against the wall, watching him while he talks on the phone. “No, I want to go. But I’m going to bring you and Jackson both.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

He hears Youngjae fidget on the other end of the line for a moment. “Okay, I’ll call Jackson. I think he might be at the station already. Should we call them and let them know we’re coming?”

Jaebum thinks for a moment, but shakes his head even though Youngjae can’t see it. “No, if they know something, I don’t want to give them time to find a way to lie about it. Better to catch them off guard.”

They hang up, and Jaebum tosses his phone on the couch before looking back at Jinyoung, who is still watching him a little warily. He’s still shirtless, though he’s pulled on a pair of Jaebum’s boxers that he’d probably found in the drawer. He tries to ignore what the sight of them on Jinyoung’s lean frame does to him, and his face warms when he looks back up and realizes Jinyoung has been watching him take inventory of all the bite marks and bruises Jaebum has left on his skin.

Clearing his throat, Jaebum looks at the wall to the right of Jinyoung’s face. “Sorry.”

“For?”

His tone is light, almost dangerously so, and Jaebum finally looks at him. There’s a pinched quality to his face, one that Jaebum has noticed suspects get when they’re innocent, but afraid. “For whatever happened in there, when I woke up. I’m sure that was a little terrifying.”

“‘A little’?” Jinyoung scoffs, but the laugh that follows it is a little shaky. Jaebum finds himself feeling...bad. Which makes him nervous--he’s never been one to be overly concerned with someone else’s feelings. “Do you care to explain, or should I just assume that you’re crazy on top of being a typical detective and get the hell out of here?”

Jaebum sighs. “Do you want coffee?”

Jinyoung nods, so Jaebum heads to the kitchen to make coffee for the both of them. He leans back against the counter as Jinyoung makes himself comfortable at the breakfast nook across from him, eyes watching him over the rim of his coffee mug as Jaebum talks. He doesn’t particularly enjoy reliving the nightmare that he’s been having for months on end, so he skimps on a lot of the details but outlines it enough so that Jinyoung is nodding in understanding every so often. He explains how real it always felt, and how it was always the exact same, except for this time.

“Which is why I’m sure I looked crazy this morning.” Jaebum says, watching the younger man across from him carefully. He feels a little awkward--he’s not really sure what this is, between the two of them. There was never any intention of bringing him home last night when he first threw caution out the window and invited Jinyoung to get a drink, but now that he’s here, shirtless at Jaebum’s breakfast counter and looking slightly afraid with sleep mussed hair, he’s not sure what to think. Jaebum knows he doesn’t hate it, but he doesn’t know what _that_ means, and he feels like he’s got one foot on stable ground and the other on a slippery slope.

“You could say that,” Jinyoung says, and Jaebum can’t help but notice that, despite looking a little less confused, Jinyoung’s face is pale and his hands shake when he goes to set his coffee cup down.

Jaebum doesn’t really know what to say to comfort him--if he’s afraid, he should leave. Jaebum’s always been of relatively stable mind and body, so it’s a little shocking to him, too, but regardless of his temperament, he’s never been worried he’d hurt somebody. He opens his mouth to tell Jinyoung he’s not going to be mad if he leaves (even though, as he thinks it, a part of himself whispers that it’s not quite true) when Jinyoung looks up at him.

“I don’t think you should go.”

This startles him. “What?”

“I don’t think you should go to Dangjin,” Jinyoung says, and he still looks a little pale, but he holds Jaebum’s eyes defiantly.

Jaebum crosses his arms over his chest, immediately getting defensive. He misses the way Jinyoung says Dangjin confidently, though he hadn't been in the room when Jaebum said it. “Why?”

“What if it’s not safe? Whoever killed Yoojin might be there, knowing that’s where you’d turn your attention.”

He can’t help it--he laughs a little. “Unsafe? Why would it be unsafe for me?”

Jinyoung doesn’t seem to find it as funny, and his face reddens a little in anger. “Do you think you’re out of the line of fire just because you’re a cop? Because you aren’t.”

Jaebum stiffens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Seeming to realize what his words might imply, Jinyoung huffs and rolls his eyes. “Aish, you know what I meant. Just because you’re a cop doesn’t mean you’re automatically safe from getting murdered.”

His irritation grows: he had said it to himself, hadn’t he? That every conversation they have inevitably leads into an argument. Jaebum must have been really out of his mind if he thought that inviting Jinyoung out for a drink and subsequently getting him into bed was going to end up anywhere but this exact scenario. Some sort of ugly feeling snags at his heart when he realizes this, but he pushes it away in favor of biting back. “Yoojin had a lot of secrets that I don’t know about; things he did that I wasn’t involved in. For what reason would I even be a target?”

Jinyoung’s face is really angry now, his thin shoulders taut. “Do crazy people need a reason to hurt somebody?”

It’s mean, and he knows it’s mean, but the pure audacity of someone he barely knows to try and tell him how to do his job grates against his nerves like sandpaper. “You tell me, do you have a reason for why _you’re_ being crazy?”

Jinyoung’s mouth drops open, looking shocked as though Jaebum had slapped him. Color rises violently to his face and spreads down his neck to his chest, covering him in a blood-red blush that, in any other circumstance, would have Jaebum appraising the way it makes his teeth marks stand out against Jinyoung’s skin. “Oh, I’m acting crazy?” he spits, putting his feet on the floor and pushing away from the chair he’d been sitting on. “You have a psychotic break this morning and want to potentially throw yourself right into the line of fire, but _I’m_ acting crazy? Okay.”

His heart stirs unwelcomingly. Jinyoung looks upset, and Jaebum hates the way he hates that look on the younger man’s face, hates the way he wants to take back what he said. But he won’t, and he doesn’t. “Why are you so upset? It’s not like we’re dating.”

The color, so violently red only moments ago, drains from Jinyoung’s face. “So you’re saying that wasn’t a date?”

“Actually,” Jaebum says, and the hurt on Jinyoung’s face is too much for him to look at directly. He looks away, reaching forward to grab Jinyoung’s cup off the bar and turns on the sink to rinse it out. “I think _you_ were the one who said it wasn’t a date.”

The silence that follows is stiff. Jinyoung is just looking at him, an unfairly disbelieving look on his face. Didn’t Jaebum try to warn him, that reporters and cops getting together was a bad idea? Didn’t Jinyoung himself even admit that Jaebum is an asshole? But Jinyoung wanted to make friends, and he picked Jaebum, out of anyone else in Seoul, and Jaebum had, for whatever reason, relented. Broken his own personal rule for this man who just waltzed into his life and sat himself down as though he belongs there. And, yet, here they are, in the exact same scenario it seems they always end up in. Jaebum wonders what it means that it bothers him this time.

After a few moments of tense silence, Jinyoung closes his eyes. When he opens them again, his face is shuttered; closed-off. The younger man doesn’t say anything else as he turns away, disappearing back into Jaebum’s bedroom. He’s surprised when the slamming of the door makes him jump and his stomach settle uncomfortably.

Jaebum doesn’t move from his spot against the counter in the kitchen, unsure of what to do: the door hadn’t been locked when Jinyoung slammed it, so it’s not like Jinyoung is trying to keep him out. Jaebum is about to go say something when his bedroom door opens again, Jinyoung coming out of it dressed in his clothes from the day before. He doesn’t look at Jaebum as he tucks his shirt into his jeans as he moves toward the entryway, one hand reaching for his coat. Jaebum finds himself wanting to say something, anything, to break the uncomfortable silence between them, with Jinyoung not looking once in his direction as he angrily shoves both arms into his coat. But whatever words he has catch in his throat like a fishhook, and then Jinyoung is barely sparing him a glance as he throws the lock on Jaebum’s front door and slams his way out of that one, too.

  
Immediately, the apartment is quieter, somehow. The slam of the door echoes, repeating over and over in his mind with the image of Jinyoung’s face as he’d went burned into the backs of his eyelids. Sighing, Jaebum pushes the heels of both hands into his eyes and tries to shake off the awful feeling in his chest.


	2. Hunting for Witches

It takes them a few days, but Jaebum finally gets permission to take Jackson and Youngjae with him to Dangjin. 

“Do you really need both of them?” Mark had asked, looking at him warily from across his desk. Mark has always been a staunch believer in the buddy system, but that apparently only applies to two buddies, not three. 

“Yes,” Jaebum had said, even though he didn’t. But something about the trip feels off to him--he can’t exactly pinpoint the reason why, and so he thinks he might just be being paranoid. The dream he’d had where he’d finally realized why the house was so familiar lingers, clinging to him and making him anxious; afraid. He doubts Yoojin’s grandparents even know anything--Yoojin most likely went to see them to tell them goodbye, or to try and say sorry for disappointing them, or maybe he even asked for money. Now that Jaebum has realized that Yoojin wasn’t the person he thought he was, the possibilities are endless. And so, because of the unsure and anxious nature of his desire to talk to them, he wants to take both of them. Mark had finally relented, and it’s an early Saturday morning when they leave.

Jackson looks up from his desk when Jaebum approaches it. He stands up quickly, bowing slightly before leaning down to pick up his messenger bag. “Hi, Jaebum. Are you ready?” 

He nods, and he smiles when he realizes that Jackson is dressed entirely in his uniform, the hat sitting neatly and perfectly over his blonde hair. “Yes. You didn’t need to wear your uniform, you know.”

Jackson looks down, like he’s embarrassed, but then he shrugs a shoulder. He points at something over Jaebum’s shoulder, handsome face breaking out in a smile. “It’s okay, looks liek Youngjae wore his, too.”

Jaebum turns to see Youngjae coming up behind them, also dressed in his uniform but holding the hat in his hands instead of wearing it. He looks back and forth between the two of them when he approaches. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jaebum says, and he reaches out to ruffle Youngjae’s hair affectionately. “Should we take my car, or a squad car?” 

“Your car,” Jackson says, walking behind the two of them as they head out into the parking lot to leave. “A squad car might be too obvious, and if they notice before we get to the door, they might try and hide something.”

“True, but you also are both wearing your uniforms, so they’re going to see that we’re cops regardless.” Jaebum cocks an eyebrow at the both of them once in they’re all in Jaebum’s car, Youngjae in the back and Jackson sitting next to him up front. “I assume neither of you brought street clothes to change into?” 

The two officers shake their heads in unison, twin grins on their faces that make Jaebum groan in exaggerated annoyance. 

  
  
  


The drive isn’t very long--it only takes them a little two hours to get there, and the drive was made a bit longer by the mid-morning Saturday traffic. They had all been chatting freely as Jaebum drove, the conversaton jumping from topic to topic naturally, but as they neared Dangjin, Jaebum felt himself getting quieter and quieter. Soon, the GPS was the only thing that was speaking, though sometimes Youngjae would lean up and say something in Jackson’s ear that was both too quiet for him to hear and hard for him to focus on, anyway. The address they had gotten was ripped from an old medical record of Yoojin’s mother, who had barely passed away four years ago, right around the time Yoojin had been released. Jaebum hopes he’d gotten to see her before she died. 

So many feelings assault his senses as they approach the neighborhood: they’d barely spent any time here, their vacation cut even shorter when Yoojin had broken his arm that night. From what he can recall, Yoojin’s grandparents were kind: they had treated Jaebum as their own, constantly asking him if he was hungry or making sure he was comfortable, and asking him questions about his own family with genuine interest. It was clear how much they doted on Yoojin, and Jaebum’s heart constricts almost painfully when he remembers how awfully, convincingly charming Yoojin could be, but how it was never more honest than when he was with his grandparents. More than anything, Jaebum knows that the Yoojin he had been around his grandparents was real, and he wishes that the Yoojin he’d seen in those weeks was the only memory of his friend he had left. 

A few minutes after arriving in the neighborhood, Jaebum pulls the car to a slow stop on the curb across the street from the house. The car is dead silent, but Jaebum doesn’t really notice--he’s too busy staring out the window, looking at the house he’s been seeing in his dreams for months, unblemished in real life by the awful amounts of blood staining the sidewalk created by the dreamscape. It’s a little bit different than it used to look: the potted plants are still lined up on the porch railing, though there aren’t as many and most of them are withered from the cold, wintry air. There’s no dog statue by the front door, either, and Jaebum wonders if there was ever a dog statue here or if it was just something that his nightmare had created. Either way, he’s glad not to see it. Squinting a little, he can see that the second step from the top of the old, wooden stairs of the porch still has that tell-tale crack in it. He takes a deep breath at the same time that Youngjae puts a gentle hand on his arm.

“Jaebum-ah,” he says quietly, so quiet it’s barely a whisper. “Are you going to be alright?” 

He looks back at the two of them, both of them watching him with concern. Nodding, he takes a deep breath again and throws a quick glance at the front of the house before turning back to them. “Since you’re both in your uniforms, let me go first. Once I’m inside, I’ll motion for you guys to join me.”

Always the worried one, Jackson’s face pulls up in a look of discontent. “What if something goes wrong?”

Jaebum has to refrain from rolling his eyes. First Jinyoung, now Jackson-- _ Jinyoung.  _ He feels a sharp twinge in his chest, but he pushes the thought away. Now isn’t a good time to get hung up on how he may or may not feel about a certain pushy reporter. Neither of them look like they’re particularly thrilled with this idea, which makes him roll his eyes for real. “You both know I’ve been doing this for almost ten years, right? Relax.” 

“We’re just worried about you, hyung. This is probably going to be hard. They might be the only people you get to talk to who last saw Yoojin alive.” Youngjae’s eyes are soft, softer than Jaebum deserves. He looks away.

Eyes fixed on the house, he doesn’t look back at either of them when he kills the engine and unlocks his door. “Like I said, I’ll motion for you to join me inside once I tell them who I am and what’s going on. If you don’t see me in ten minutes, come after me.”

The two young men murmur in agreement, and Jaebum closes the car door quietly on the hushed conversation the two of them break into when he steps out. It’s almost noon now, and the air is still cold but the sunlight feels nice, soaking through the material of his coat and warming his shoulders. He pushes his sunglasses up his nose with one hand, looking up and down the street--it’s eerily quiet for a Saturday, the distant noises of traffic and kids screaming at a park maybe a few streets away only noticeable when he strains to hear it. The near silence of the street has that familiar dread building up in his chest, and he tries to shake it off-- _ This isn’t your dream, Jaebum,  _ he reminds himself, taking a steadying breath before leaning up off the car and jogging across the street.

It feels strange to him being back at this house, nearly twenty years after the first and only time he’s been here. He wonders why the dream chose Yoojin’s grandparent’s house--maybe as a symbol of lost innocence, or something; he doesn’t really believe in all that dream bullshit, but he does think it’s a little strange that, out of every memory he was with Kim Yoojin, the reoccurring nightmare should include one as innocuous as this one. 

The dread fades into the background a little as he climbs the steps carefully, listening to them creak under his feet, but it doesn’t dissipate entirely. It settles in his stomach, making him feel a little uneasy. Listening carefully, he doesn’t hear any noise coming from the house, but they would be quite old now if they still live here, so it’s not unrealistic that they may be napping. Throwing a quick, reassuring nod to the boys in the car, Jaebum knocks rapidly on the door and waits for a moment--nothing. Not even the smallest noise to let him know he’d been heard, so he knocks again, a little louder. 

“Hello?” he calls, knocking again after a moment, the same silence meeting him. “Is anyone home?” 

Still nothing. Now the silence  _ really  _ starts to make him nervous, but he tells himself that it’s a Saturday and they’re probably napping on top of being hard of hearing, or they aren’t home, or they don’t even live here anymore. Without thinking he grabs the door handle, twisting it down to check to see if it’s locked. His heart starts to beat harder when it gives underneath his hand, the door swinging open easily when he pushes on it. 

Peering in, everything seems mostly normal: none of the lights are on, the house dimly lit by the early afternoon sunshine that seeps in through the gaps in the curtains in the living room on the left and through the small kitchen window over the sink. The chairs are all pushed in underneath the large, dark wood table in the convex arc to the right of the open kitchen, and Jaebum swallows when watery memories surface of the nights he and Yoojin had spent at that exact same table in that exact same spot nearly twenty years ago. It confirms his suspicions that his grandparents do still live here, but something about the silence of the house reminds him terribly of his nightmare, and the dread starts to creep up his stomach. 

With one hand still on the doorknob, he leans further in until he can see all of the living room on the left side of the entryway, also impeccably neat and shrouded in the grayish dark. “Hello?” 

Nothing. Not a shuffle, or a cough, or the closing of a door. 

His hand drops away from the door handle, suddenly clammy. He feels like he’s being unreasonable for being so afraid all of the sudden: it's a Saturday, they’re probably just out; it seems like a nice enough neighborhood that they’d feel comfortable leaving their doors unlocked during the day and he’s technically breaking and entering right now. But even as the logical side of himself tries to process this, something feels  _ wrong.  _ It’s too quiet, too dark, too blanketed in darkness for a Saturday afternoon. This feeling compels him to step inside, and he leaves the door to swing half-shut as he enters the house.

The bad feeling only grows the further he goes in, and he’s starting to wonder if he should turn around and get the boys when he stops at the bottom of the stairs, head cocked. He strains to hear something, anything, but the only thing he can hear is the faint ringing in his ears from how absolutely silent the house is. He should really give up, and he knows it--they aren’t here, they can’t help him today, and he needs to give up before he gets caught being in someone’s house without permission. But something in his gut propels him up the stairs, the sound of his leather dress shoes loud on the polished hardwood. The first staircase is small, leading to a square landing and then to a longer staircase that goes up in the opposite direction to the second floor. He pauses for a moment before he gets to the landing, eyes catching on a small photo hung up among the seemingly hundreds of others--leaning closer, he realizes that it’s a picture of himself Yoojin, standing on the porch of this house with their arms around each other, Yoojin noticeably taller even at eleven. His heart constricts--how could they have fallen so far from this? If he does ever get to talk to Yoojin’s grandparents, he wonders if they’d let him keep it. 

He sighs, tearing his eyes away from their young, smiling faces and climbs the rest of the stairs to the landing. The other half of it is obscured from view by the wall lining the staircase, and when he finally rounds the corner, all the horror and the dread he’d been feeling heaves itself up and into his throat like a scream that dies before it can escape. 

Blood pools on the dark wood of the landing, so dark it looks black. His eyes, wide in his face, travel up the stairs where it’s run down like a waterfall to the massive puddle at the bottom. There’s so much of it, so much more than he’s ever seen at one crime scene before, and it shakes him--which is hard to do, after some of the things he’s seen, he’d thought he’d been unshakable, but seeing the blood where it’s run down the stairs and going stagnant at the bottom has something snapping inside him. He books it up the stairs, trying to avoid stepping in the blood on the steps but there’s so much of it, and it feels tacky underneath his shoes as he  pounds up the rest of the stairs, heart stuttering wildly. When he gets to the second story landing, a noise drags itself out of him that almost sounds inhuman in its distress. There’s blood  _ everywhere-- _ it’s splattered along the walls, criss-crossing in a macabre hatched pattern against the light paint, splattered over the glass of the pictures hanging up, drying in various massive puddles on the floor. Light spills out from an open door down a short hallway on his right, and he has a feeling he knows exactly what he’s going to find there, but he takes off toward it anyway, heart thundering in his ears. 

He nearly slips when he gets to the doorway, and he has to catch himself on the doorframe to keep himself from falling into the blood smeared across the white tile of the bathroom floor. This is, if possible, worse than the scene just outside on the landing: blood on the floor, on the mirror, handprints smeared against the porcelain of the sink. Time seems to have shifted, and he wonders how long he’s been in the house for already, and if the boys are worried about him. He doesn’t want them to come in, they don’t need to see this, and he’s about to turn and go back down the stairs to warn them when he looks down into the bathtub.

Her face looks just like it does in his memories, though much older, more lined. There’s no blood on her face, her eyes closed and face void of all color; he’s not naive enough to think it, but had he been anyone else he would think she was just asleep. But then his eyes find the wide, dark red stain on the front of her sweater, blooming like a rose from the center of her chest. He dry-heaves, hand coming on on the edge of the sink and gripping it before he falls down, eyes wide in horror as he takes in the rest of Yoojin’s grandmother: normal clothes, comfortable like pajamas, but there’s so much blood soaking the front of them that Jaebum can’t make out what color they might have been originally. Jaebum feels his eyes roll in horror back toward the door, seeing all the blood where it’s absolutely covering the floor and disappearing down the stairs, and he can’t imagine all this blood came from one person, and another low moan of horror escapes him when he realizes that Yoojin’s grandfather is dead somewhere up here, too. She looks so small, so frail; Jaebum wonders wildly how someone as big as Yoojin could come from someone as small as his mother, who is just as small as the dead woman in front of him. Tears sting the back of his eyes, unwelcome, as he looks at her: a woman so kind and warm didn’t deserve this, and the realization that Yoojin was into something infinitely more sinister than he could ever imagine has him dropping to his knees beside the bathtub. Words form in his brain but they can’t seem to make it to his mouth; he doesn’t even know what they were when he hears the faintest of sounds: a breath, pulled in, agonizingly slow.

_ Oh, god,  _ he realizes in horror, putting a hand over his mouth, smearing blood on his face and trying to hold his breath to try and hear it again. He does, a second later. A breath, pulled in, wheezing.  _ Oh, god, she’s alive. She’s alive.  _ He’s barely aware of the way the blood on the floor soaks into the legs of his dress pants, and he fights to get his coat off before he throws it carelessly behind him. Jaebum’s mind seems to be working on autopilot, and he doesn’t even hesitate before he plunges both his hands into the bathtub to get them underneath the body of Yoojin’s’ grandmother, lifting her up and nearly falling backward with how light she is. He feels a hysterical laugh building up in his chest when he wonders if it's because of all the blood she lost, but he swallows it back when her small head lolls against his shoulder, white hair coming out from the loose ponytail that’s soaked in her blood at the very bottom. Hysteria only crowds him further when he feels the weak, almost impossible expasion of her chest against his--all of that blood must not have been hers, then, if she’s still alive, and the implication of that in of itself is enough to almost make him drop. He carries her through the doorway, heart slamming painfully against his ribs, every nerve ending in his body lit-up like a house during Christmas. The blood on the floor isn’t very fresh but it's still slick, and he has to walk slowly to keep from falling. Blood soaks the front of his shirt and stains his hands and forearms up to the elbows; it drips down the front of his pants and makes his shoes slippery with it as he approaches the stairs. As he makes his way down the blood soaked stairs, he hears Youngjae’s voice ring out into the house from the doorway:

“Jaebum? Are you okay? Jackson and I are coming in!” 

He wants to scream, wants to tell them to get out and to call a fucking ambulance, but then he hears Youngjae running down the stairs of the porch outside and hollering for Jackson to get out of the car and come with him. No sound comes out even when he opens his mouth, as much as he tries to scream, he can’t. Jaebum finally makes it to the landing with Yoojin’s grandmother in his arms, but the bottoms of his shoes are still slick with blood and he only makes it down a couple of the steps before he slips. Youngjae and Jackson are running in just in time to see it, and Jaebum finally finds the words when he feels the stairs come out from underneath his feet.

“Call the fucking ambulance!” He screams it, so loudly that he doesn’t even recognize his own voice, and he only catches a glimpse of the horror on Jackson and Youngjae’s faces before he falls. He steels himself against it, leaning backward to avoid dropping Yoojin’s grandmother when he slips, his lower back slamming painfully into one of the stairs. Pain rockets up his spine, jarring him, and he feels the muscles in his back twitch at how painful it is. He cries out, tightening his arms around Yoojin’s grandmother as not to drop her. His eyes are squeezed shut in pain for a moment before he opens them again to see Jackson running back inside, coming over to him and kneeling down.

“Oh, god, Jaebum hyung, what the hell happened, what’s going on--”

“Jackson,” Jaebum says, gritting his teeth through the pain in his back. “Help me stand up.” 

The younger man’s eyes widen, one hand on Jaebum’s bicep tightening in alarm. “Jaebum, I don’t know if that’s a good idea, you fell hard--”

“Jackson,” he says, eyes burning, jaw tight and with all the force he can muster. “She’s still alive, but barely--” more pain shoots up his back, sharp like a blade, and his hisses through his teeth before dropping his head back painfully onto the step above him. He can hear the sirens as they get closer, it taking only moments for it to start blaring through the open door of the house. There’s a clamor outside, shouting voices over the sirens and the slamming of car doors. Suddenly there’s what feels like a thousand people in the house--paramedics are trying to untangle Yoojin’s grandmother from his grip, and he barely registers how tightly he’s holding onto her until a paramedic has to grab him by the arm and gently tell him to let go.

“She’s still alive,” Jaebum pants, the pain in his back almost unbearable now. “She’s still alive.” 

“We know,” she says, and then she’s looking up at two more paramedics, and suddenly he’s being lifted. The pain is immense, shooting up and down his legs like needles, and he instinctively throws an arm out to fist a hand in the shirt of one of the paramedics. “Help her,” he says, desperately, the breath feeling punched out of him. “She didn’t--” he hisses as the gurney bumps over the threshold of the front door. “We need her.”

The paramedic just nods, but doesn’t say anything to him. The street outside has suddenly taken on a similar view to the one he’s seen in his dreams a thousand times: police tape roping off the front of the house, ambulances, people and press crowded together at the edge of the tape and watching with wide eyes. Jaebum’s eyes find Youngjae, who’s up off the hood of Jaebum’s car in an instant, scrambling to get to him. 

“Jaebum! Hyung!” He shouts, trying to come close to him but getting dragged back by Jackson, who says something to him that he doesn’t hear. Before they put him in the ambulance, Jaebum leans up enough to see the both of them and shouts, “go back to the station! Get Mark, tell him what happened! Meet me at the hospital!” 

“Detective,” one of the paramedics says, snapping her fingers in front of his face when he drops his head back down onto the gurney, the edges of his vision tunneling. Her voice sounds watery, and he’s having trouble keeping his eyes focused on her when they strap him in and slam the doors of the ambulance shut, the fluorescent light above them lighting her face in a strange way. “Jaebum,” she says again, her voice wavering, but Jaebum thinks it might just be him, the world feeling distorted and fuzzy around the edges. “You’re going into shock, stay with me, okay? We’re going to get you to the hospital. I want you to look at me, and count to--”

Whatever she says next is lost on him as his eyes roll back and the world goes dark.

 

 

He wakes up slowly. It feels like he’s swimming in murky water, the surface rimmed in light but just out of reach; every time he feels like he’s going to break through it, he’s dragged back down into the darkness and the drug fueled dreams. Finally, after trying time and again to come back to himself, he finally hears quiet voices piercing the awful silence inside his head. Jaebum blinks slowly, his eyelids feeling heavy and weighted and he struggles to keep them open. The edges of his vision are still fuzzy, tinted with grey, but after a few moments of blinking he can finally keep his eyes open enough to make out the shape of Mark and Youngjae standing at the end of his bed. He tries to say something but it sticks in his throat, the sound lost on the two of them, deep in their own hushed conversation. Jaebum turns his head, slowly becoming more and more awake, and his heartbeat kicks up a little when his tired eyes take in all the machines around him, beeping quietly. He inhales sharply, and he feels the medical tape bunch on the skin of his hand when he fists it in the sheets. 

Mark turns, face shadowed and exhausted looking, when the heart monitor starts to beep faster. Jaebum’s eyes slide over to him, his memories so fuzzy and bleak; he can’t remember what happened to him and he doesn’t know why he’s stuck in a hospital bed with Mark and Youngjae looking at him like they’d both been awake for weeks. When their eyes meet, Jaebum sees Mark practically sag in relief. “Jaebum.”

Jaebum licks his lips and swallows before trying to talk again. His voice, when he finds it, is raspy and quiet. “What happened?”

Mark and Youngjae share a look, Mark just nods at him. Youngjae, dressed in street clothes, comes to sit in the chair next to Jaebum’s bed and grips the bed rail almost painfully tight. “You--what do you remember?”

Closing his eyes again, Jaebum tries to focus--what happened? He’s not even sure how much time had passed since the last time he’d been awake, since he can’t really remember when that was exactly. Jaebum thinks about it so hard his head starts to hurt a little, but then it slowly comes back to him: he slept with Jinyoung, they had a fight about him going to Dangjin, and then Jaebum didn’t talk to him for a few days; he’d gotten permission to go to Dangjin with Youngjae and Jackson to see if Yoojin’s grandparents still lived there. He remembers giving them a hard time about wearing the uniforms, the way Youngjae had been singing along to some awful song on the radio in the car, remembers the way the GPS had been the only noise once they’d gotten closer to the neighborhood. He remembers parking across the street and being struck by how the house had been identical to the one from his dreams, minus the blood--

“Oh, god,” Jaebum mumbles in horror, eyes widening and going to Youngjae’s immediately. He remembers the blood on the stairs, the way it had felt under his shoes, the way it covered the second floor and painted the walls; he remembers almost slipping on the blood covering the bathroom floor and he remembers pulling Yoojin’s grandmother from the tub, so close to death, and carrying her down the stairs. He remembers the blood the most, sprayed on the walls, the floors, covering the front of Yoojin’s grandmother’s clothes, his hands, his face, the waterfall of it on the stairs. Jaebum inhales through his mouth in panic, one hand shooting out to grab onto Youngjae’s wrist, afraid that, if he doesn’t, Youngjae will disappear and this will all just be a dream and he’s still drowning in sleep. But Youngjae puts his hand over Jaebum’s, squeezing the fingers and looking at his face with an expression of pity and sympathy so profound Jaebum wants to puke. He looks away, to Mark, who’s standing at the end of the bed and watching him stone-faced with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. 

“Yoojin’s grandmother--” Jaebum breathes, suddenly and terribly awake. He lets go of Youngjae’s wrist to throw the blanket off his legs, startled by the hospital clothes but not particularly worried about them, and moves quickly to put his feet on the floor.

“Jaebum, don’t--”

He manages to touch his feet to the cold tile of the floor before the pain shoots up his back like a hot blade. Jaebum hisses through his teeth, dropping back down to the bed with his hand fisted in his lower back and his bottom lip pulled painfully between his teeth. The cold tile feels good, grounds him and keeps him from focusing entirely on the pain, but there’s no escaping the fact that whatever he did to his back  _ fucking  _ hurts. Youngjae gets out of the chair and comes around, putting a hand on Jaebum’s bicep.

“Hyung, I don’t think you should try walking--”

Ignoring this, Jaebum just looks at him, the sharp pain mostly gone and a dull, throbbing ache in its place. “How long have I been out for?”

Mark answers, and Jaebum turns his head to look at him. “About a day, almost.”

“Did you find out anything? About what happened to Yoojin’s grandmother? I have to go talk to her--” he tries to get up again, but Youngjae places a firm hand on his chest. 

“We don’t know much more than you do. Yoojin’s fingerprints were everywhere, but that could just be because he went to visit them. There was another set of fingerprints that didn’t bring anything up--”

Jaebum interrupts Mark, grabbing Youngjae’s wrist and gently moving it off his chest so he can sit up. He feels the muscles in his back creak when he does, the dull pain spreading, but it's not totally unbearable. “I have to go talk to her. Where is she?” Jaebum motions for Youngjae to lean closer so that he can lean on him, getting an arm around Youngjae’s shoulders and using the younger man’s stability to pull himself to a standing position. He hisses in pain, his legs feeling weak, but he can at least stand. 

“Jaebum...” Mark sighs, sounding so tired. 

“Where is she?” 

Mark just rolls his eyes. “She’s still in ICU. Jaebum, she was stabbed in the chest, a mere few centimeters away from the heart. She’s old and lost a lot of blood. They don’t expect her to make it.”

This makes him angry for some reason. He grinds his teeth together in pain as he takes a step forward, arm locked around Youngjae’s shoulders. “Take me to her.”

  
  
  


They walk slowly, just the two of them, Mark opting to stay in Jaebum’s room in case the doctor or one of the nurses comes back to check on him and they don’t cause a crisis. Jaebum doesn’t say anything as they make their way down the hallway, Youngjae uncomfortable like he wants to say something, but Jaebum makes it clear with his body language that, whatever it is, he doesn’t want to hear it. 

It takes them awhile, but they finally find the room that Yoojin’s grandmother is in. Youngjae mumbles quietly to him that he’s pretty sure they aren’t supposed to be there and that they probably shouldn’t go in her room--”she might not even be awake, Jaebum hyung”--but Jaebum just shushes him gently and asks him to wait back in his room. 

Jaebum limps into her room, shrouded in darkness except for the soft orange glow of a bedside lamp. Her chest is thick with bandages, the line of them obvious even underneath the blanket pulled up to her neck. The machines hooked up to her that are beeping softly and rhythmically look imposing in the soft light, and his heart starts to beat harder as he slowly approaches the chair by her bed. When he reaches it, he sits slowly, wincing at the pain that shoots up his back when he leans into it. His throat feels tight as he folds his arms on the bed rail and rests his chin on them, the deathly paleness of her face visible even in the warm light of the bedside lamp. Her chest moves shallowly, her face pinched like it hurts, and Jaebum swallows hard before trying to speak. 

“Ahjumma...” his voice cracks, and he clears it quietly before trying to go on. “Ahjumma, I don’t know if you can hear me. But my name is Im Jaebum, do you remember me? I was Yoojin’s best friend. I came to your house when we were eleven. You were very nice to me. Yoojin broke the step on the porch with his skateboard and then broke his arm. I’m sorry.” He pauses, watching her face, and he feels his throat tighten. “I don’t know what I came to say. I was hoping you could tell me something that might help us find who killed Yoojin, but seeing you like this, suffering, I can’t bring myself to ask. So I just want to thank you--”

His heart stutters when he hears a sharp, rasping wheeze come from the old woman lying in front of him. She doesn’t open her eyes, but one of her small and frail hands manages to find Jaebum’s wrist and rests there. Her fingers are ice cold, and so weak. Jaebum places a hand gently over hers. He opens his mouth to say something, but she pulls in another wheeze before her voice quietly finds Jaebum’s ears, and it’s so quiet Jaebum has to lean in to hear her. “Jaebum. I remember you.”

She sounds so tired, so close to letting go. Jaebum’s heart thumps painfully, the burn of unshed tears in his throat more pronounced now as he watches her struggle to speak. “Ahjumma, don’t--” 

She ignores him, continuing to talk slowly and in between great, heaving rasps. “Yoojin adored...you. You were...all he talked about. He asked me to...frame that photo...of the two...of you...and hang it...in the stairwell. Loved you like...his own brother.”

Jaebum’s chest feels tight, eyes stinging. 

“He was always...troubled. His mother worried...constantly. Thought something was...wrong with him, wanted to take...him to the doctor. But I...told her not to, that he was just a child. He would...grow out of his...behavior issues. He...was an...angry boy. I do not...know why.” 

“I know,” Jaebum says, voice shaking, his fingers tightening on the old woman’s hand in comfort. Her face is contorted in pain, each wheezing heave of her chest seeming to drain her more and more. “I know.”

“When...he came to see...his grandfather and I...a few months ago...he was...changed. Different. As a boy...he was never afraid...of anything...but that day...he was afraid.”

Jaebum’s vision narrows down, heart beating wildly in his chest.  _ Is this it?  _ He wonders, hoping that whatever his grandmother says will help them in someway, help them find who did this to Yoojin; to her. He squeezes her hand gently. “Of what?” he asks quietly, voice still shaking.

“I...don’t know,” she gasps, clearly in more pain now, but determined to continue. “He was always looking...over his shoulder...even inside the house. He told us...he was sorry, for going...to jail. That he didn’t...call us enough. He said that there...is something we needed to know about him...about...what happened that night with Taeyoung...”

Jaebum goes rigid, ignoring the pain that throbs in his back when his back straightens away from the chair. “What did he say?” he whispers desperately, throat tight with emotion, heart beating wildly in his chest, feeling as though he’s so close to something but can’t quite make it out yet.

She gasps, the breath rattling in her chest when she does, and she coughs before continuing. “He didn’t...say. Said that he would...tell us...after he found you...in Seoul. That...he needed to tell..you first. He was the one who answered the phone when it rang...the morning he left... looked so pale, like he’d seen a ghost...and then Yoojin left...When we asked who it was...he looked panicked...all he said...was ‘Taeyoung’...and then he was out the...door...on his way to find you.”

Jaebum’s heart is positively slamming against his ribcage now, the sound of it rushing in his ears.  _ Taeyoung?  _ That’s impossible, Taeyoung was dead, he couldn’t have called, but why would he have said Taeyoung? What could have Taeyoung had to do with any of this? “What did he say on the phone?”

“He said, ‘why would you do that?’...his voice was awful, so...scared. He said ‘how could you know that? How do you know that? Don’t hurt him, please, don’t hurt him’...before hanging up...muttering about Taeyoung...a brother....he had just...been to see his family...maybe that’s why...” 

Her chest stutters, pulling a painful cough out of her. Alarmed, Jaebum moves to press the emergency button, but her small hand uses the last of its strength to close around his wrist. Her eyes, closed the entire time before this, are open now. Jaebum looks into them, sees the agony that is mirrored in his own, and his body freezes like he’d been dumped in ice water. She’s so alert, despite being on the edge of death, and something about the look in her eyes scares him, like the truth inside her is so big and real that there’s no longer any room for it. “He said...that he’s sorry...for what he did to you. That he...would do anything...to take it all back. Yoojin...really loved you.” A smile pulls at the sides of her mouth, and Jaebum knows what’s coming, he can hear it in the monitors, can feel it in the way her hand loosens from where it had been gripping his wrist, can see it, most of all, in her face. A thousand emotions build up in his chest, towering higher and higher, threatening to break over him like a wave. With the last remaining breath, Yoojin’s grandmother closes her eyes and says, 

“You were his brother...more than anything...and he...treasured you...for that. You...were the one...thing...that chased away the anger...and made him...a normal boy. He told me...before he left...that he would...never forgive himself...for what he did. That he would...take it all back...to get another chance.”

And then, as quietly as she had spoken, she exhales. The last breath of her leaves quietly, softer than a whisper; her final moments infinitely more gentle than he was ready for, despite the senseless and blood-soaked way he had found her. And her gentle death was well deserved, but even as the monitor starts to send up an alarm, wailing painfully loud, Jaebum doesn’t know that he would ever deserve what she has given him; some peace of mind about Yoojin, a man that he both knows less and more than he thought he did. His breath is shallow in his tight chest as he stands, pushing the chair away from her bed, his whole body numb as he slowly makes his way out of her room. The swarm of hospital staff don’t seem to notice him, and his eyes are mostly fixed ahead as he goes back to his own room, the numbness in his chest starting to lighten until it feels like pins and needles. Jaebum doesn’t realize how hard his hands are shaking until he reaches for the door handle of his hospital room, missing it the first couple of times he goes for it, fingers so cold and numb that they barely wrap all the way around it. The pins and needles start to burn as he slips back into his room, letting the door shut behind him quietly, thankful for the same soft-lit darkness of his room. 

Mark and Youngjae have gone, and he thinks the room is empty until he sees someone get up from the chair by his bed, stepping into the soft light a few feet away from him. Jinyoung’s wearing jeans and a hoodie today, glasses missing from his face, his hands wringing nervously in the silence that stretches between them.

For a moment, Jaebum is too shocked to do anything--on top of the numbness in his body, the surprise at seeing Jinyoung waiting for him in his hospital room keeps him rooted to the spot. The ache in his back has faded to a dull throb, barely registering with him as he watches Jinyoung’s face, anxiously creased at the eyes and pretty mouth turned down in concern. Jaebum watches in a sort of detached awe as Jinyoung licks his lips, shifting on his feet like he’s about to speak, but stays in place and goes silent. 

A thousand and one things pass through Jaebum’s mind as he watches Jinyoung watch him: the love shared between two only-children, families found in each other where they had felt that their own had been incomplete. The resounding betrayal like a thunderclap, bringing nothing but pain and heartache, opening wide a distance between himself and Yoojin that could never be breached. The loss that had come with his death, so many things unspoken between the two of them, so much unresolved; Jaebum feels the loss finally slice through his heart like an arrow, and realizes that despite the secret parts of Yoojin’s life that had not included him, Jaebum always knew him in his heart, and that his betrayal and death rattles him because Yoojin was his family. His heart dives in his chest when he realizes that this hurts so unabashedly because Yoojin had hurt him like only family can.

And Jinyoung--Jinyoung is here, waiting for him, handsome face lined with worry, delicate hands twisting around each opposite wrist, even after Jaebum had scorned him. The suspicion buries its head in the sand as Jaebum looks at him, slim shoulders taut, and Jaebum wonders what he has done to deserve someone like this, someone who has so willingly taken the brunt of his anger and turned it back on him like so many people are afraid of. Someone who has so easily deflected the ugliness of his heart and turned it into something to be changed; coal into diamonds. Someone who so easily walked into his life, sat down like he belonged, plucked the feelings that Jaebum had thought were buried and held them in the palm of his hand like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Jaebum?” Jinyoung finally says, a whisper in the silent room. 

It’s all he needed.

“Jinyoung-ah,” Jaebum breathes, and then he’s coming forward, stepping into Jinyoung’s space before nearly falling into the younger man’s arms. 

Jinyoung just holds him as the wave breaks over him, exploding until the burn of tears in his throat feels like swallowed fire. He buries his face in the crook of Jinyoung’s neck when the tears come, that wave of emotion pulling him under until he can’t tell what feeling is what, they all clash together in his chest as he leans against Jinyoung, who lays a cheek against the top of Jaebum’s head and a hand cradling the back of it. Jinyoung doesn’t complain when Jaebum’s hands fist desperately in the front of his sweatshirt, pulling Jinyoung to him, hands curled so tight he feels like his knuckles will shatter. Jaebum doesn’t cry anymore, but for the first time since Taeyoung’s death nearly thirteen years ago Jaebum lets horrible, grief soaked sobs tear themselves from him and into the comfort of Jinyoung’s neck. For now his mind is wiped of anything else: any information to be gleaned from the last words of Yoojin’s grandmother are lost in the storm of emotion that rages through him, clutching desperately at Jinyoung’s sweater like he’s trying to pull him closer, pull Jinyoung inside of him so that the burden of this awful sadness will not be all on him. But Jinyoung only holds him tighter, pulling them back toward Jaebum’s hospital bed until they’re laying on it together. Jaebum curls into Jinyoung, the pain in his back so far from his mind that he doesn’t even consider how uncomfortable this is, only held together by the warmth of Jinyoung’s body half under his and the weight of Jinyoung’s hand against the center of his back as though he’s holding him together.

Jaebum wants to say something, anything, but the tears won’t stop and the words won’t come, and eventually it drags him back down into that blissful, murky black.

 

 

His eyes open slowly, peeling apart where they’d been glued together with the tears he’d shed even in his sleep. Jaebum realizes he’s still in the hospital as he blinks awake, alone on the bed now, but there’s the sound of hushed whispers outside the open door that means he’s not entirely alone. The pain in his back flares as he sits up, hissing through his teeth, and a similar pain throbs at his temples when he manages to stand up off the bed and move toward the door.

Sticking his head out of it, he sees Jinyoung a few feet away talking to a doctor. Their voices are low, and then stop completely when Jinyoung looks over and notices him. The night had been emotional, with Jaebum crying into Jinyoung’s neck until he’d fallen asleep, but Jinyoung’s face is curiously clear of any strong feeling when he looks at him. 

The doctor turns, noticing, and the conversation they had been having ends as the doctor ushers Jaebum back into the room with Jinyoung walking quietly behind him. Once Jaebum is seated on the edge of the bed, bare feet on the cold floor waking him up a bit more, the doctor sits down across from him in the chair and gives him a hard look.

“We’re going to discharge you today.”

Relief flushes through him. He had thought they were going to keep him here because of his back, and that Mark was going to pull him from the case if he wasn’t going to be able to work in the field. “Good, what do I need to sign--”  
  
The doctor holds up a hand, cutting him off. “Not so fast. You really pulled something in your back when you hit those stairs, detective. It’s best that we send you home, but that you are to remain on bedrest for at least a week. At  _ least.  _ And any more than that is up to Commissioner Tuan.”

He blanches, glancing over at Jinyoung standing against the wall, whose face hasn’t changed at all; the sight of his impassive face makes him a bit nervous. Jaebum looks back at the doctor, his hands fisting in the sheets. “I just may have gotten a huge break in this case, I can’t give up now--”

“No one said you were giving up,” the doctor says, his handsome face lined with years of stress, most likely because of patients like Jaebum. “But you’ll be working from home. You didn’t hurt anything too terribly; no pinched nerves or slipped discs, but any strenuous activity and you run the risk of getting a hernia. Your back will be less sore in the coming days and you’ll feel fine, but working it too hard  _ will  _ come back to haunt you.” 

Jaebum feels the room spinning--he’d just woken up from a very emotional and confusing night to an empty bed, an impassive and stone-faced Jinyoung, and a pushy doctor. His headache from crying throbs painfully and he squeezes his eyes shut. “Fine. But I’m going to work from home.”

The doctor smiles at him, seemingly satisfied that he was met with little resistance. “No one said you couldn’t, but that’s the only place you’ll be working from. Now, I’m going to get your prescription and your discharge paperwork. I’ll be right back.”

When the doctor leaves the room he expects Jinyoung to sit down across from him, but he doesn’t. Jinyoung stays against the wall with his arms folded, looking everywhere but directly at him. It makes his chest hurt, for some reason–last night Jinyoung had seemed nervous until he’d come back in the room, as though he’d been worried that Jaebum was seriously hurt. His voice as he’d tried to comfort him by smoothing back his hair and wiping the tears from his face had been soft; sweet, and more gentle than he probably deserved. But now Jinyoung seems closed off and anxious, and with some surprise Jaebum finds himself missing the sweetness of the previous night.

“Jinyoung-ah,” Jaebum says, relieved when Jinyoung looks over at him. “What’s the matter?” 

“Nothing,” Jinyoung says, but his voice sounds watery, his arms crossing tighter across his chest and his face turning away from him. Jinyoung doesn't say anything else, but one of his hand slips free to wipe quickly at his face. Jaebum realizes then, with a start, that Jinyoung wasn’t angry or anxious–he’s  _ crying _ . 

“Ah, Jinyoung,” Jaebum says softly, an emotion in his voice he doesn’t want to examine too closely. He holds his arms open, the large white hospital shirt hanging off his wide shoulders. Jinyoung glances over, not moving at first. “Come here.”

After a brief hesitation, Jinyoung drops his arms and moves to sit beside Jaebum on the bed. Jaebum can’t describe the feeling in his chest when Jinyoung fits perfectly in the circle of his arms, the younger’s face burrowing in his neck. He shivers when he feels Jinyoung’s mouth pass over the skin when he moves, and tries to remind himself now’s not the time or place. Jinyoung inhales shakily, and Jaebum buries his face in Jinyoung’s hair. “I’m alright, Jinyoungie. I get to go home.”

Jinyoung nods. As they wait for the doctor, Jinyoung’s face in his neck and one arm around Jaebum’s shoulders, he can’t help but feel as though last night had caused a significant shift in the status of their relationship. He doesn’t know that he can even call it that--he doesn’t know what  _ this is,  _ exactly, can’t say for sure if Jinyoung would even want whatever  _ this is,  _ but the the tightness in his chest at the thought of Jinyoung leaving him when he’s discharged and going to his own house makes him tighten his arm around Jinyoung’s waist. Jaebum tries not to look at his emotions too closely, since it always gets him in trouble, but as Jinyoung breathes quietly against his neck, he knows that there has been some fundamental change in the way he feels about a certain steadfast, annoying reporter. 

The discharge process takes about an hour, with the doctor relentlessly telling Jaebum direction after direction of how to take care of his back. It’s during this time that he’s told he’d been asleep for nearly 12 hours, and that it’s nearly eight o’clock at night. He’s lost nearly two days being in the hospital, and this information makes him anxious. He wants to go home and get on his computer to write everything down and look at everything he has to try and put some of these new pieces together. The doctor insists that Jaebum leave the hospital in a wheelchair (“Technically, it’s policy–”) but Jaebum had pocketed the drugs the doctor had given him in the pocket of the cardigan Youngjae had brought him at some point and limped his way out the front doors with his arm around Jinyoung’s waist. 

The drive home is silent, but comfortably so, and it’s only when Jinyoung parks in the garage of Jaebum’s apartment building that Jaebum breaks it. 

“You’re going to stay, right?” 

Jinyoung looks over at him, thin hands anxiously gripping the wheel as though he expects Jaebum to take it back or change his mind. When he doesn’t, Jinyoung lets go, unlocking the car. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll stay.”

It takes him twice as long to get to his apartment than it usually does with the slow pace Jinyoung makes him take, even after protesting that his back doesn’t even hurt that much. He gives a brief and vague explanation to the doorman who, understandably, looks shocked when Jaebum comes in after disappearing for almost two days. Despite saying his back doesn’t hurt, Jaebum takes the opportunity to lean on Jinyoung in the elevator, who just breathes quietly next to him, thin shoulders relaxed. It seems so normal, so easy, that Jaebum feels his stomach twist nervously. He doesn’t mention it, though, and he lets Jinyoung guide him into the apartment and onto the couch in the living room even though he doesn’t strictly need it. And he’d never tell anyone this, but he’d forgotten how good it feels to be taken care of–he doesn’t allow himself this often, if at all. Mark and Youngjae both know from experience that even trying to express concern in his direction makes him uncomfortable, but there’s something about watching Jinyoung fuss over him with a tired fondness in his face that sends a sickly sweet feeling kicking up in Jaebum’s chest. 

Jinyoung mutters something about blankets under his breath and leaves the room, and as soon as he’s out of sight Jaebum is up off the couch and going to get his notebook off the desk in the corner of the apartment. He stands behind the chair as he flips through it, eyes scanning the notes he’s made so far and trying to connect them with the information Yoojin’s grandmother had given him. There’s a part of himself that tries to keep him grounded and tells him that she was dying and her words could be untrue, but Jaebum had seen the look in her eyes before she went, and he tries desperately to make a connection; somewhere, somehow. He’s turning the pages frantically when he hears Jinyoung come back in the room, sighing quietly. 

“Jaebum, come sit down.”

Jaebum hums at him, trailing a finger down the page he’d written on last. His brain starts to work faster, reading and trying to connect things at the same time. Jaebum claps the notebook shut suddenly, turning to Jinyoung but not really looking at him. “When Yoojin first died, and I had talked to the warden of the prison, he said that Yoojin hadn’t made any enemies. So I called the train station where he’d been dropped off after he’d been released.”

Jinyoung just watches him, his glasses still missing. Jaebum notices that he’s wearing jeans again and a thin jacket, unzipped a little at the neck, revealing the skin of his chest at the base of his throat. “Jaebum, you should sit down.”

He keeps going as though Jinyoung hadn’t spoken, dropping the notebook down onto the desk and coming back into the main living room, starting to pace slowly as he puts some pieces together. “The woman working told me he’d gone to Changwon, and then to Dangjin. I thought it was so weird, because we don’t even know anyone from Changwon. But when I spoke to Yoojin’s grandmother before she died–”

Jinyoung tries to interrupt, the lines appearing in his face warning Jaebum that he’s starting to get stressed. The blankets in his hands are balled up tightly in his fists, but Jaebum can’t stop now, and he keeps going before Jinyoung has time to say anything.

“When I spoke to her, she said that they’d gotten a phone call. That day that Yoojin had been there. And that Yoojin had said something about Taeyoung and a ‘brother’.”

“Jaebum–”

Jaebum puts a hand up, his pacing coming to a stop as all his thoughts start to crash together. “And I remembered that Taeyoung and his family had moved to Seoul from Changwon.” His heartbeat thunders in his ears. Jinyoung looks a little pale, and Jaebum’s thoughts derail for a moment, getting worried–could Jinyoung really be  _ this  _ nervous about him standing up? But then the thought goes, more pieces coming together for him at lightspeed. “And it makes sense. Yoojin went to Changwon to find Taeyoung’s family. He had to have. He would have remembered that’s where they had moved from–” 

Jinyoung’s voice shakes. “Please, will you sit down–”

“–and maybe he hadn’t been successful, maybe they weren’t home or something, or they don’t live there anymore. So maybe he left and went to Dangjin to just see his grandparents, and Taeyoung’s brother called, maybe? Yoojin’s grandmother said something about Yoojin muttering something about a brother. Maybe Taeyoung’s younger brother had remembered him and found Yoojin’s grandparent’s number somehow and tried to get in contact. And then, maybe...but, wait. Yoojin’s grandmother said something on the phone about ‘don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him’ while he was on the phone, so maybe he was worried about Taeyoung’s brother getting hurt––”

“Will you sit,  _ please––” _

Jaebum’s back straightens like a rod. The breath rushes out of him on an exhale, like some epiphany just occurred to him. “Maybe Yoojin was coming to Seoul to get me, to say sorry, and to go back to Changwon with him after Taeyoung’s brother called. Maybe he wanted to tell us the truth about what happened that night at the same time, but someone–” Jaebum’s voice cracks. “Someone killed him before that could happen. So they had to know him. They had to be involved, they had to know him.”

Jinyoung’s just watching him, the blankets loose in his hands now and his face drawn. Jaebum thinks for a moment, brain still working. And then– “Aren’t you from Changwon? Did you know them?”

There’s barely a hint of hesitation on Jinyoung’s part, but Jaebum is a detective and he notices. Jinyoung swallows almost imperceptibly, but Jaebum’s trained eyes catch it. Jinyoung drops the blankets after a moment, face stony. “No. Changwon isn’t that small. I didn’t know them.”

Jaebum wonders if he should be worried about the small hesitation and the paleness of Jinyoung’s face earlier, but there’s bright color staining his cheeks now as he comes forward and grabs the front of Jaebum’s t-shirt. Jaebum lets out a startled noise, almost tripping as Jinyoung drags him toward the couch by his collar. There’s a visible tension in the younger man’s shoulders, his hand fisted tightly, and Jaebum is about to ask him what’s wrong when Jinyoung is turning him and hooking a leg around his knee to fold it. Jaebum is guided to the couch by Jinyoung’s hand on his collar, the material stretched out when Jinyoung lets go of it. He gasps quietly when his back hits the couch, more out of surprise of the roughness of the gesture than any pain it brings him. Jaebum looks up at Jinyoung standing between his legs, cheeks stained pink as he holds Jaebum’s eyes. There’s a look in them, fierce and demanding, and Jaebum feels his heart stir. He thinks about what he’d thought the other night when Jinyoung had been waiting for him in his hospital room–ever since their first meeting, Jinyoung has seemed so utterly unafraid of his anger, and there’s always an air of defiance to Jinyoung’s nature that may or may not have Jaebum falling in love with him a little bit.  
  
The thought startles him even as Jinyoung gently puts one knee on the couch on either side of him, straddling his hips. Jinyoung rests gently in his lap, his hands sliding up Jaebum’s chest in a way that makes him shiver and curving around to lock behind his neck. Jaebum’s breath hitches at the feeling of Jinyoung’s fingertips barely brushing his neck, and the look in Jinyoung’s eyes grows heavier. He licks his lips unconsciously, and Jaebum greedily follows the movement with his eyes, starting to get warm under the collar at the feeling of Jinyoung sitting in his lap. His heart kicks up a gear, the sound of it rushing in his ears when he watches Jinyoung’s eyes follow the line of his throat when he swallows hard. 

Jinyoung looks back up at him after a moment, from under his eyelashes. “If you’re not going to sit when I ask you to sit,” he says, his voice low, and Jaebum is surprised when the sudden deepness of it has heat pooling in his stomach. “Then I’m going to  _ make  _ you sit.” 

Jaebum hates the way his voice trembles when Jinyoung runs his fingers lightly against the base of his neck, shuddering at the goosebumps that erupt down his arms. “Yeah?” 

A sharp glint appears in Jinyoung’s eye, a coy smile pulling up one side of the younger man’s mouth. Jaebum is in no way prepared for the way that Jinyoung rolls his hips down, grinding his ass into Jaebum’s crotch, breathing out a confident “yeah” as he does. He can’t help it: a moan drags itself from his mouth, quiet and breathless, and he puts a hand on Jinyoung’s lower back to steady him. His other hand stays on the couch, unsure what to do with it, and then Jinyoung is holding his eyes with an intensity that only fans the flames in his gut when he rolls his hips again. Jaebum puts his other hand on Jinyoung’s thigh, gripping it, and he’s satisfied when Jinyoung’s mouth drops open a little. Jaebum feels Jinyoung’s hand leave his hairline, fingertips trailing along the skin of his neck and up his throat; they skirt the edge of his chin until Jinyoung is dragging a thumb across Jaebum’s lower lip. Jaebum runs his hand up Jinyoung’s thigh to rest it on his hip, pulling Jinyoung down harder when Jinyoung grinds against him again, his breath shattered.

Every nerve ending feels like a live wire. “Jinyoungie,” he breathes, hitching when Jinyoung rolls his hips while he’s talking. “I don’t think the doctor would recommend me fucking you the first day I get home from the hospital.” 

Jinyoung exhales quietly, letting go of where he’s holding Jaebum’s chin to get both hands up under his shirt. Jaebum inhales sharply at the feeling of Jinyoung’s fingertips near the waistband of his jeans. Jinyoung just smiles, dragging his hands up Jaebum’s chest so slowly that Jaebum drops his head back, fingers tightening on Jinyoung’s waist and groaning quietly. His shirt bunches against Jinyoung’s wrists as he pulls it up with his hands, motioning for Jaebum to lift his arms so that he can pull the shirt up over his head. Jinyoung tosses the shirt onto the floor behind him, eyes on Jaebum’s chest like he’s trying to catalogue every detail. The pressure of Jinyoung’s weight on his dick feels so good, but it would feel better if he was moving, and he lifts his hips up impatiently. Jinyoung’s eyes find his again, heavy and dark with lust, the sight of it knocking the breath out of him. Without looking away, Jinyoung gets a hand down between his legs and palms Jaebum’s cock through his jeans. Jaebum whimpers, feeling weak, not used to being so at the mercy of someone else. He grinds into Jinyoung’s palm for a moment, his breath quickening, hands on Jinyoung’s thighs and trying to spread them so that Jinyoung can reach him better. 

Finally, Jinyoung pulls his hand away, walking his fingers up to Jaebum’s belt. “Who said anything about you doing all the work?” 

If Jaebum wasn’t already hard and straining to do something about it, he thinks about how immediately hard he’d get at the implication in Jinyoung’s tone. The confident way Jinyoung implies that he’s about to fuck himself on Jaebum’s dick has him almost coming in his jeans like a horny, desperate teenager. 

Jinyoung undoes Jaebum’s belt with one hand, plump bottom lip pulled between his teeth as he pulls it through the loops and drops it. He deftly pops the button on Jaebum’s jeans immediately after, pulling the zipper, and the relieving of pressure on his dick makes him close his eyes and groan. Jinyoung palms him through his boxers some more, until Jaebum’s hips are coming up off the couch to grind into his hand, and he’s about to tell Jinyoung that if he wants to fuck he’s going to have to stop touching him like this. 

“Jinyoung–” He inhales, cutting himself off, tearing his eyes away from where he’s watching Jinyoung touch him between his own spread thighs across his lap. He looks up, Jinyoung’s eyes down, but he looks up when Jaebum breathes out his name. Their eye contact is immediate and heavy, and Jaebum pulls Jinyoung down with a hand on the back of his neck to cover the younger man’s mouth with his own.

Jinyoung’s hand stops working his cock, momentarily distracted by his mouth, parting his lips greedily when Jaebum licks across the seam of them. Jaebum licks into his mouth, and he’s amazed at how he could have fucked Jinyoung while they were drunk when this is what it feels like uninhibited by anything. Lightning strikes in his blood as they kiss, Jinyoung whining into his mouth, tongue sliding against Jaebum’s; the wet heat of Jinyoung’s mouth is so good that he can’t help but moan softly into his mouth. Jinyoung just breathes it in, a moan of his own escaping when Jaebum moves his hands to his waist again. Jaebum feels blindly for the zipper of Jinyoung’s hoodie, pulling it down slowly until Jinyoung is whining softly and going to cover Jaebum’s hand with his own to pull it down faster. He breaks the kiss to lean back, watching as he unzips Jinyoung’s plain, olive green hoodie, exposing more and more skin of Jinyoung’s torso.

“Jesus,” Jaebum pants, yanking the zipper down the rest of the way impatiently when he sees the almost imperceptible line of hair trailing from Jinyoung’s navel and disappearing into his underwear. “You weren’t wearing a shirt under this?”

“No,” Jinyoung breathes against his neck, getting his fingers into the waistband of Jaebum’s exposed boxers and tugging on them impatiently.

Jaebum feels his eyes roll back a little, desperate for friction now, desperate for Jinyoung to  _ do something.  _ “It’s cold outside, crazy.”

Jinyoung’s breath ghosts across his ear, hot and damp, and he shudders on moan. “Warm me up, then.  _ Hyung.”  _

Jaebum bites his lip as Jinyoung climbs off his lap to strip. His eyes follow the movements of Jinyoung’s hands as they slowly rid him of his jeans, then his boxers, and Jaebum feels especially close to losing it when Jinyoung gently pushes the hoodie from his shoulders until he’s standing naked between his legs. He’s about to hook his fingers into his own boxers to yank them down when Jinyoung leans forward and knocks his hands away to do it himself. Jaebum drops his head back, unable to watch as Jinyoung pulls his jeans down to his knees and situates himself back on Jaebum’s lap. Their skin slides together, already slippery with a thin sheen of sweat, and Jaebum bites his lip against the sound that wants to tear itself from his chest when he feels their cocks slide together. 

“Fuck–” Jaebum says, unable to hold it back, and he tilts his head up just in time to see Jinyoung sucking lazily on two fingers of his right hand, watching Jaebum from beneath his lowered eyelashes. The breath punches out of him. “Oh, my god–”

Grinning around them, Jinyoung pulls them out with a wet  _ pop  _ and trails them down his own chest, eyes fluttering closed as he drags them along his stomach and then they’re disappearing between his legs, wrist bent against his thigh as he fingers himself open on Jaebum’s lap. 

“Jinyoungie–” he moans, and he wants to look away, knows if he keeps watching Jinyoung’s wrist rotate and his eyelids flutter, bottom lip wet and plump where it’s pulled between his perfect teeth, he’s going to come before he even gets inside him. But he can’t look away, watching and listening to the tiny moans and gasps that escape Jinyoung’s mouth as he pleasures himself spread across Jaebum’s bare thighs. “Let me– let me do this–”

“No,” he breathes, and the wrecked sound of Jinyoung’s voice almost has him coming right then and there. “I’m almost, oh–I’m almost ready.”

Jaebum takes the hint, and he gently taps against Jinyoung’s mouth with his fingers. Jinyoung opens greedily, tongue pressing against the underside of Jaebum’s fingers, sucking and licking at them. Jaebum shudders, pulling them out when he feels Jinyoung’s saliva start dripping down his wrist. He pulls his hand away, breath hitching at the sight of Jinyoung’s spit slicked and swollen mouth, and reaches down to touch himself lazily. It feels good, Jinyoung’s saliva and precome slicking him up, careful not to get too rough. Finally Jinyoung’s hand moves, his fingers brushing against the insides of Jaebum’s thighs as he pulls them out of himself and goes to steady himself with one hand on Jaebum’s hip. Jinyoung uses his other hand to push Jaebum’s away from his cock and then he’s getting up on his knees to position himself over it. After hesitating for barely a moment, Jinyoung slowly lowers himself until he’s sitting flush in Jaebum’s lap again. 

Sweat plasters Jinyoung’s hair to his temples, and he already looks completely wrecked just  _ sitting  _ there, full to the brim, and before Jaebum even has the chance to breathe Jinyoung rolls his hips down. Pleasure hits him like a truck, a moan dragging itself from the bottom of his chest as Jinyoung starts to rock his hips. Jaebum just watches Jinyoung’s face change, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open, tongue lazily dragging along his lower lip as he starts to pick up his pace. Jaebum drops his head back after a moment, eyes closed and his throat working as he swallows the noises he wants to make as Jinyoung fucks himself into Jaebum’s lap. The noises Jinyoung makes are absolutely sinful, moans and curses punching out of him every time he grinds down, his hands moving to Jaebum’s bare shoulders. Jinyoung moves faster, barely lifting himself off Jaebum’s lap now, and Jaebum finds himself lifting his hips off the couch to drive into him deeper. Jinyoung shouts, nails digging into his skin but it just sends pleasure-pain skittering up and down his arms and legs, his own mouth dropping open on a moan. He gets his hands on Jinyoung’s ass, gripping and digging his fingers into the meat of it, satisfied when Jinyoung’s back bows. He steadies the younger man on his lap as Jinyoung’s thrusts start to get erratic.

Finally looking up, Jaebum eyes the line of Jinyoung’s throat when he tips his head back, panting and whining with every thrust. He doesn’t look down as he begs, “hyung, touch me, please––”

He doesn’t hesitate, wrapping a hand around Jinyoung’s dick where it’s hard and straining between them. Jinyoung shouts out again, yelling  _ fuck!  _ Into the near silence of the apartment, and Jaebum is distantly glad that his neighbors are very far down the hall. Jinyoung just gets louder as he fucks himself on Jaebum’s cock, crying out like he’s torn between rolling his hips down or rolling up into Jaebum’s hand where he’s jerking him off, quick and rough. A few more hard thrusts from Jaebum has Jinyoung sinking his teeth into his beautiful bottom lip as he comes, back arched and keening as it paints his flat stomach. Jinyoung whimpers as he continues to roll his hips down, working Jaebum now, and the sight of Jinyoung looking fucked out and desperate and so wet for him makes his hips stutter. Jinyoung offers up his throat, moaning quietly and grabbing a fistful of his hair when Jaebum sinks his teeth into the skin of his neck. Jaebum’s hips rocking quickly, the tightness building his his stomach, sweat pouring down his neck and down his chest as he comes. He gasps against the skin of Jinyoung’s chest, forehead on his collarbone and panting as he comes down.

Jinyoung pulls off slowly, and Jaebum closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see how pornographic it looks, unsure if he’d be able to handle it. He opens his eyes when Jinyoung touches his shoulders, biting his lip at the wetness running down the insides of Jinyoung’s thighs and tearing his eyes away to look up at him instead. Jinyoung bends down to pull his jeans the rest of the way off, taking his hand after and gently pulling him up and toward the bathroom.

They shower together, cleaning each other up, sharing soft smiles and sweet kisses underneath the stream of water from the shower head. Jinyoung offers to wash his hair for him, and Jaebum closes his eyes and sighs happily as Jinyoung massages his scalp. Almost all of the tension and terror from the past couple of days removes itself from the forefront of his mind for now, feeling exhausted and a little sore from the sporty session Jinyoung decided to spring on him, though he doesn’t mind when Jinyoung is pampering him like this. Jinyoung’s hands cup his face when the younger man tilts his head back toward the stream, rinsing the soap away, and Jaebum feels his heart contract at how he badly he wants this. Just this–the sweetness of aftercare, cleaning each other up and touching softly, carefully. Wants the feeling of Jinyoung’s gentleness pressing itself into his skin for the rest of his life; he doesn’t know if he’ll be alright without it, the gentleness of someone who has seen him immersed in his worst nightmare and yet has seemed to curb the sharpness of his anger despite it. This feeling terrifies him, expanding in his chest until he feels like he can’t breathe, so unaccustomed to feeling this way about someone. But the feeling is there, lingering even after sex, hanging on to every cell in his body. 

“Jinyoungie.” He opens his eyes, voice low, “I–”

He stops, chokes on the rest of the words when he sees Jinyoung’s face. The blush on his face and down his neck stands out sharply against the paleness of his face, tension lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and pulling down the beautiful curve of his mouth. He doesn’t seem to realize that Jaebum is talking to him, expression drawn into something that he can’t define, and as a detective and as a lover ( _ boyfriend?  _ He’s unsure how to define even this, it seems), it makes him uneasy. Something like discomfort, and fear, and anxiety. Jaebum wants to say something to him to wipe the look on his face, the clear distress pulling at Jaebum’s heart like a fish hook. But he stays quiet, watching Jinyoung’s face, and after a moment he seems to register that Jaebum was going to say something.

His expression clears, softening immediately, but Jaebum can still detect the tension around his eyes and mouth even as he smiles. “I’m sorry. What were you going to say?” 

“I don’t know.”

A lie.

Jinyoung doesn’t seem to notice, though. He just hums quietly and reaches behind him to turn off the water, kissing the corner of Jaebum’s mouth sweetly before stepping out and getting them both towels. They dry off in the bedroom, Jaebum giving Jinyoung a pair of his own underwear to pull on, smiling when they’re just a bit too big in the waist but are stretched tightly across his ass. Jinyoung keeps a hand on his arm as he lays down on the bed, looking nervous when Jaebum winces. Jaebum just pats the empty space next to him, turning off the light when Jinyoung crawls in and curls up.

“You don’t have to keep helping me like that,” Jaebum says, Jinyoung’s head on his arm and smoothing back the younger man’s hair with his hand. “I’m not breakable.”

He listens to Jinyoung breathe for a moment, and when he answers, his voice sounds melancholy. Jaebum’s eyebrows furrow in the dark. “We’re all breakable. Even you.”

“Jinyoungie–?” 

Jinyoung huddles closer, humming and pressing a sweet kiss to the center of Jaebum’s throat before laying his head on his shoulder. “Goodnight.” 

Jaebum nuzzles Jinyoung’s hair, still damp, and then stares out the window through the gap in the curtains, wondering why, for the first time,  _ he  _ feels like the vulnerable one. 

 

 

 

“Yah... What are you doing?” 

Jaebum’s barely opened his eyes when he feels a weight pressing down on his hips and two hands on his bare chest. He blinks sleepily, squinting into the bright light of his bedroom where the curtains have been pushed back. Jaebum finally looks up at Jinyoung, who’s sitting on top of him and smiling innocently. Used to working with criminals, Jaebum finds this mildly suspicious, and he puts his hands on Jinyoung’s hips but looks at him quizzically. 

“Good morning,” Jinyoung says, fingers lightly stroking his skin where they’re splayed out on his chest. 

It feels good, and he hums before narrowing his eyes. “Why are you smiling at me like that?” 

Jinyoung’s face falls a little bit. “What do you mean?”

“Like you’re up to something.”

He pauses for a moment, eyebrows drawing up, and then he’s laughing. Jinyoung covers his mouth with one hand, the other still on his chest, and Jaebum wants to sigh contentedly with what a picture this makes: Jinyoung wearing  _ his  _ underwear, sitting on top of him while the morning sun spills into the room, outlining the reporter in gold; his hand delicately covering his mouth while he laughs, wonderful and loud and deep. It’s a wonder that Jaebum even asks what he’s up to: looking like this, hair still rumpled from sleep and fitting perfectly on Jaebum’s lap, he think he’d let Park Jinyoung get away with anything. 

Jaebum is about to say something else when he freezes, mouth open. The sun is up, filtering into the room, signaling the start of the new day. Jinyoung is on top of him, holding most of his weight off so he doesn’t hurt Jaebum’s back. He’s awake, his hands warm on Jinyoung’s skin. It’s so normal that he can’t help but feel like something is  _ wrong,  _ that something is missing, or––

He gasps, hands tightening on Jinyoung’s waist. “I didn’t have that nightmare last night.”

It takes him a moment, his face drawn up in concern, but Jinyoung’s expression finally clears when he realizes what Jaebum is talking about. Jinyoung puts his hands back down on his chest, thumbs rubbing softly. “It's been that long, huh?”

“Yeah,” he says, breathing in deep. “It’s been a long time. Nearly every night, or at least once a week for years. But I finally slept through the night without having it, or even thinking about it.” 

Jinyoung smiles at him, and Jaebum’s heart starts to hurt. “You’re welcome.”

Jaebum makes a face at him, but he reaches up to cup Jinyoung’s face in one hand, thumb against his bottom lip. His expression clears, softening as he drags his thumb across Jinyoung’s bottom lip, resting it at the corner of his mouth. Jinyoung leans down, as if he understands what Jaebum is asking for even though he didn’t say it out loud, and presses a soft kiss to Jaebum’s mouth. “Thank you.” 

Jinyoung nuzzles in between Jaebum’s neck and shoulder shyly, smiling against the skin. The younger man’s breath across his neck makes him shudder, and he’s about to push Jinyoung away gently when he pulls away and climbs off his lap. Jaebum leans up and folds his arms behind his head, wincing a bit at the strain in his back when he does, but settling back down comfortably to watch Jinyoung as he gets dressed. 

It is strangely, comfortably domestic. He’s not really used to this part: he’s watched one night stands dress themselves and leave his apartment in the morning, much in the same way, with his hands behind his head and stretched out on the bed as they gather their things and avoid looking at him. But he’s never watched someone dress themselves in his room with the feeling that he could watch them dress a thousand times over and never get tired of it. Jinyoung hums quietly under his breath, the tension and melancholy from the night before seemingly disappeared. Still, even though the younger’s handsome face seems clear and content, there’s a tug at Jaebum’s heart when he thinks about the way Jinyoung had looked in the shower last night when he’d thought Jaebum wasn’t paying attention.

“Jinyoung-ah,” he says softly, waiting for him to turn around as he digs through the bag he’d brought with him. Jaebum realizes with a start that, if has it now, he would have brought it to the hospital, and that means that Jinyoung had planned on staying with him. His heart does something weird at the thought of it and he swallows against it. When Jinyoung doesn’t turn around, jeans pulled up halfway around his hips but unbuttoned and still shirtless, Jaebum calls him again. “Jinyoung-ah.”

This time he does turn around, t-shirt in hand. He smiles when he meets Jaebum’s eyes, and Jaebum  _ really  _ wishes that his stomach wouldn’t do that weird, swoopy thing. “Yes?” 

“Are you alright?” 

Jinyoung cocks his head, hand dropping to his side, the shirt momentarily forgotten. “Of course I’m okay. Why do you ask?”

He wonders if he did the right thing bringing it up, but he feels weird not doing so. “You seemed sad last night.” 

A look crosses the younger man’s face––Jaebum’s trained eyes are barely fast enough to catch it. The look of worry, anxious and a bit sad, tension lines around his eyes in the same way there had been the night before. Jinyoung sighs, pulling his shirt on over his head and tucking it into his jeans without looking up again. “It’s nothing.”

Jaebum sucks his teeth. This has always been his least favorite part of relationships. “Aish, you can tell me, Jinyoungie.”

Jinyoung still won’t look up; he does the button on his jeans and puts on his belt, hands shaking a bit. He rustles around his bag for a moment before pulling out a cardigan, stuffing both arms into it and adjusting it with his face turned away. Jaebum doesn’t like the silence, doesn’t like the way he can see the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He’s going to say something else when Jinyoung picks up his bag and slings it over his shoulder, taking out his glasses and pushing them up the bridge of his nose before looking at him. 

“What is this?” 

Jaebum feels caught off guard. “Huh?”

Jinyoung sighs, nervously twisting his hands. “What is this? Between us?” 

This is his least favorite, too. Ever since they’ve met he’s struggled to figure out the man standing across from him, someone who is steadfastly unafraid to piss him off and will return the anger in kind without so much as flinching. Jaebum is used to people bending to his will; be it because he’s going to put them in jail or because he’s going to get them into bed, they have always bent to him, but he has realized that Jinyoung has obstinately refused to do so. Swayed, perhaps, but never bent, and has met each of Jaebum’s resistances with a determination unrivaled by anyone he’s ever seen. He’s been asked this question a thousand times and the answer has always been the same:  _ nothing.  _ But now, for the first time in years, he’s startled to find that he can’t quite bring himself to say the word.

He swallows. “What do you want it to be?” 

Jinyoung pulls a face. “Don’t use interrogation tactics on me. I just want to know.” 

“I––” he reverts to his old, most used question: “Why?” 

And this may have been the wrong question to ask, because Jinyoung’s face closes off completely, breaking eye contact. But Jinyoung just looks back up a moment later, face clean as a slate. “Because, I want to know if I should start trying to forget about you or not.”

Jaebum’s heart stops at the seriousness of the question that wasn’t technically asked but was heavily implied. Jinyoung is just staring at him, hands finally steady where they’re resting on the strap of his messenger bag. He thinks about how he should answer this, throat working. He thinks about what his life would be like if he tells Jinyoung that yes, he should start to forget about him. Would someone ever wait for him in his hospital room like that again, hold him while he cries himself to sleep when he’s made his reputation as a cold and heartless detective? Would someone ever refuse to succumb to the nature of his anger like Jinyoung has? Would he ever experience that softness he’d felt in the shower again? He thinks, perhaps, but the person who would be doing all these things in the future doesn’t sound like, doesn’t smell like, doesn’t feel like Jinyoung. He doesn’t think that, if this question was turned on him, he’d be able to forget Park Jinyoung at all. He doesn’t really know if he wants to anymore. 

His heart thumps painfully against his ribs, and while he wishes Jinyoung hadn’t asked, it’s not an unfair question. Jaebum had even said to him that this was dangerous, hadn’t he? 

But he never imagined that it would be dangerous for himself, instead.

Jaebum takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment. He’s a little scared that Jinyoung will be gone when he opens them, but the younger man is still there, looking like the dream that Jaebum has been craving for so many years. 

“No.”

He sees Jinyoung swallow hard, fingers tightening on his bag. “‘No’, what?” 

Jaebum just looks at him, hopes that the ice he’s kept around his heart for so long has melted enough that he can convey the right feeling in his face. “No. Don’t start forgetting about me just yet.” 

And then the tension breaks, just like that. The smile that spreads across Jinyoung’s face, lines at the corners of his eyes going from tense to relaxed and real and all for him, is beautiful. Jinyoung comes over to where he’s still laying on the bed, sitting down by Jaebum’s hip with his feet still on the floor. They just look at each other for a moment, Jaebum admiring the way the sun climbing outside the window illuminates different parts of Jinyoung’s face. Finally, Jinyoung smiles and laughs a little bit, slapping Jaebum’s bare chest playfully. 

“Ow,” he says, grabbing for Jinyoung’s wrist but missing. “What?”

“I have to go do some work. You’re distracting me.” 

“I haven’t even gotten dressed yet.”

His eyes darken a bit, eyes flicking down to his bare chest and back up. “Exactly.”

Rolling his eyes, Jaebum grabs a corner of the blanket and rolls away, effectively tucking himself in. His back creaks as he does it, a dull throb spreading through his hips, but it’s not terrible, and the pressure is relieved a bit when he settles on his stomach. Face in the pillow, Jaebum stays wrapped up in the blanket and doesn’t look over. “Go away.”

He hears Jinyoung laugh softly. “Aish, you baby,” he says, before gently patting his butt and then leaving the room. 

Jaebum considers getting up when he hears the front door to his apartment close, but he’s feeling lazy. And since he’s not allowed to leave the house to go to the station to do any work, he’ll have to work from here, and decides he can afford an extra hour of sleep. He closes his eyes against the bright light filtering in through the window still, but minutes and minutes of silence pass without him getting any more tired. He’s not even actually sure what time it is, and if it’s even an appropriate time to keep sleeping, so he sighs and pushes himself up and out of bed. 

He doesn’t bother getting dressed, putting coffee on before grabbing his laptop and setting up a temporary work station at the kitchen table. He scrolls aimlessly through news articles for a while, a bit crestfallen when, even in the reports, there’s nothing new about Yoojin. There’s a ton of articles on the scene from Dangjin, though, and he clicks on an article from some online news outlet he’s never heard of before. It says what he assumes most of the other ones say: that Jaebum had been the one to find her while investigating a potential lead, and how he’d tried to save her life but she’d ultimately succumbed to her wounds in the hospital. His heart stutters uncomfortably, and he’s about to click away from the article when he sees there’s another paragraph almost hidden at the bottom after an ad.

Scrolling down to it, dread fills him as he reads it: 

_ What most Dangjin police officers won’t put in their reports is the similarity to other murders that have taken place in Dangjin city and surrounding provinces in the past––most notably Dangjin itself and the residential Seoul areas––there was the murder of the Lee family in the late nineties, where someone unknown slipped into the house the night before and stabbed each family member in the chest several times, meanwhile practically painting the inside of their house in their blood. There was the murder of the Moon family, who is survived by just one child, Moon Jinhyeon, who was not there the night the murder took place. Same story, there: unknown culprit sneaks in and stabs family members, smears blood all over the house, waiting for someone to find it. The Kims, The Yoos, and finally the Khang family in the mid 2000s. What Dangjin police don’t want people to think is that there’s a serial murderer on their hands, when this is  _ exactly  _ what this is: a serial murderer, with seemingly no motive. And with the recent death of ex-Seoul PD officer Kim Yoojin, who was killed in the same way as the previous families, whose body was left in the public eye, the Dangjin police should be taking this more seriously, as whoever this is must be getting braver–– _

Jaebum takes a deep breath and closes out of the webpage, looking blankly at the photo of Nora he has set as his desktop. A serial murderer? Could a serial murderer really be at fault for Yoojin’s death, and for the death of Yoojin’s grandparents? It’s possible, he supposes––he remembers when the murders happened, some when he was still in high school and some when he had first entered the force; he remembers coming up with theories with Yoojin in their squad car one night until they’d freaked themselves out and moved the patrol car under a street light.

But a serial murderer, killing Yoojin and then his grandparents, even though Yoojin had been dead already? It’s too random. Jaebum puts his head in his hands, tugging on his dark hair in frustration. So if it hadn’t been random, and Yoojin knew who killed him, is it possible that Yoojin knew a serial killer? Jaebum doesn’t think so––Yoojin had disappeared sometimes, growing up; though they were close they had different classes and thus some different friends, and Jaebum never faulted him for spending time with people he didn’t know. But Yoojin had been a bit weird on some of the occasions he’d shown back up to class after being MIA all weekend long. Avoiding questions, sporting a new bruise here and there. But he’d always laughed it off and said that soccer with his friends gets a little rough. And, Jaebum, his ever loyal friend, didn’t think to question it.

So, he’s back to not knowing Yoojin as well as he thought he did. Sighing, Jaebum brings the browser back up. He types in the name of his and Yoojin’s high school, hoping that their webpage is still up and that they still archive the yearbooks digitally. He’s relieved when they do, and he spends the next couple of hours poring over it, writing down the names of people that are familiar to him as people that Yoojin talked to in the halls but didn’t really know Jaebum all that well. He’s going to have to track some of them down using the database they use at the station, and even then, the information might not be current or correct. After a while of staring at the black and white faces of people who may or may not have something to do with or know anything about Yoojin’s murder, he decides to take a break.

Closing his notebook, he minimizes the browser window and brings up a blank one. Since he doesn’t really surf the web that often he’s not really sure what to do, and he finds himself staring at the blinking cursor in the address bar for far too long. Jaebum almost sighs and shuts the computer when he remembers Jinyoung saying he had to do some work today. When they’d first met and he’d found out what online press Jinyoung had worked for, he’d been mostly disinterested. When he found out how frustrating and annoyingly persistent Jinyoung can be, he’d been even  _ more  _ disinterested, and never bothered looking up the company website or even reading any of the articles he might have written about the case so far. He brings up the company’s website, amazed at how minimalist it is. Bold and dark black lettering against a stark white background, giving off the feel of an old-style newspaper for the modern times. The front page is an article about some thieves who’d stolen millions of won worth of flowers from a flower shop just days before a festival is about to begin, published a couple of days ago. Cocking an eyebrow, Jaebum leans his chin in his hand and clicks through to the next article on the next page.

He’s surprised when all of the articles on the homepage are all just petty crimes, and span weeks ago. There’s not a single article about Yoojin or his case, or even about a murder at all––the articles he skims through are mostly robbery, fraud, some scandals in big business here and there. There’s a strange feelings brewing in his chest the more he looks around on the site, and he tries to push it as far down as he can as he scrolls back up to the top. There’s a small drop down menu, and he hovers over it to reveal an archives link. He clicks on it, all the titles neatly displayed for him with the date of the article publication right underneath the tag line. There’s only a few recent articles from the past month, and none of them have anything to do with murder. The feeling in his chest only grows and grows, his lungs feeling tight. 

Jaebum scrolls back to the drop down menu, and discovers that there’s a staff directory. His heart starts to beat uncomfortably off rhythm as the page loads, the feeling of dread creeping up his stomach and into his throat.

The staff list is incredibly small. There’s only six people who work there, most of them in their late forties or early fifties at the least. They’re organized by hierarchy, with the editor-in-chief at the top and the reporters at the bottom. The two reporters listed are most likely in their twenties, maybe thirties, smiling brightly for the camera and looking for all the world like real, bonafide reporters. 

But neither of them are Jinyoung.

His heart starts to pound now, the dread pushing it up into his throat until he swears he can feel it beating in his ears. He searches around the website some more, desperate to try and find something that connects Jinyoung to them; an article by him, a mention, his name somewhere in the letters from the editor, on the contact page. But there’s nothing––no mention of a Park Jinyoung anywhere on the website for the Seoul Crime Report, an online news hub that seems to only report petty crimes and misdemeanours and not the heinous, shocking news of murder. 

He tries looking up the name “Park Jinyoung” on the search engine, but that brings up  _ thousands  _ of results––the CEO of the entertainment company, some moderately successful singers/actors/businessmen. But no reporters at the Seoul Crime Report.

So, if Jinyoung isn’t who he says he is, then who is he? 

Jaebum’s hands shake as he pushes up away from the table. His mind is working a thousand miles per hour: Jinyoung had been so professional: he’d had press badges at the conference that first morning, he’d had equipment, all the finesse of a real reporter. But was he  _ acting?  _ Jaebum feels like he’s going to be sick, and he near trips over the cat as he stumbles into his bedroom. His head is spinning, so many thoughts and questions burning through it like the tail end of a comet that he can’t really focus on one. He blindly pulls on jeans and a t-shirt, absentmindedly pulling a hoodie on although he doesn’t really have the intention of going outside––where would he even go, even do? The man who claimed to be Park Jinyoung the reporter knows so much about this case, so much about him; there’s so much he could expose at any moment, and he could completely blow this entire case if he decides he’s had enough of Jaebum.

It’s almost too much. Jaebum mutely finds his way back to the couch, sitting down on it heavily and just staring at the wall. He lets the mess in his brain sort itself out for a while, thoughts bouncing back and forth until they’re almost intelligible. A heavy, disappointed sort of rage settles over his shoulders like a blanket, both at whoever Jinyoung really is and at himself for believing it. For falling for it. The anger seeps into him, constricting his chest. He got played; he’s fallen for Jinyoung without even being entirely sure who he is, and he almost admitted how he felt last night. He laughs bitterly to himself when he realizes that he’s fallen in love with another person who has turned out to be someone he doesn’t know, after all.

This goes on for a couple of hours––he bounces between the couch and the kitchen table, unsure what to do with himself. He’s about to give up and call Mark when he hears the front doorknob rattle and then turn when whoever it is realizes it’s unlocked.

“Hi,” Jinyoung says, a little breathlessly, like he’d been running. Jaebum just stands by the kitchen table, watching him as he shakes some ice out of his hair and shivers. “Sorry I didn’t call or anything, we were busy at the paper trying to put some stuff together––” 

“Where were you, really?” 

There must be something in his voice, because Jinyoung looks up from where he’s toeing off his sneakers by the door in concern. Jaebum isn’t sure how his face looks, but whatever’s conveyed on it makes Jinyoung go pale. The younger man drops his bag by the door, ridding himself of his coat before stepping down into the living room. “I was at the paper. Jaebum-ah, are you alright? You look like you’re going to be sick, or pass out. What’s the matter?” 

The rage that’s been slowly building up in him since he’d discovered that Jinyoung wasn’t anywhere on the website for his supposed newspaper feels like it’s going to crush him. He’s standing stiff as a board, his back aching faintly with the strain of it. One hand grips the edge of the kitchen table so hard his fingertips are white, and Jinyoung looks down and notices it. His eyebrows go up, stitching together after in concern, and he makes it halfway through the living room before Jaebum stops him.

Jaebum uses his other hand to whip his laptop around so that the screen is facing Jinyoung, the staff directory for the Seoul Crime Report still pulled up with his face and name clearly missing. Voice thin, coming through his clenched teeth, Jaebum asks, “then care to explain this?” 

Jinyoung’s eyes go from his face to the computer, stepping closer to get a better look at it before he freezes a few feet away. Jaebum watches him as all the color drains from his face, the sudden paleness shocking against the usual tan of his skin. 

“Jaebum––”

He slams the laptop shut, hand shaking as he pulls it away to roughly push it through his hair. “Who are you?” 

Jinyoung stops, a look passing over him as though Jaebum had physically hit him. It scares him a bit that he has to remind himself not to. “Jaebum, I–”

“Who are you?” he asks again, louder, rage coloring his voice, tightening all his nerve endings to high wires. Jinyoung looks like he’s in shock, mouth open but nothing coming out, and how could Jaebum be so stupid? How could Jaebum have so blindly let him in, just because he was stubborn and unafraid of Jaebum like everyone else has ever been? How could he let himself be fooled by someone so beautiful? How could he stand here, even now, knowing he’d been lied to, and feel the ache in his chest at the thought of Jinyoung going away?

“I’m Jinyoung,” the younger man says, voice shaking, hands trembling there they come up to rest against his own neck. “Park Jinyoung. I’m a reporter––”

“No you’re not,” Jaebum says through his teeth, the rage and the hurt and the grief surging in his chest, threatening to break over him and drag him beneath it like a wave. 

“I am,” Jinyoung says, sounding desperate. “Just listen to me—”

“Then why aren’t you on here?” Jaebum spits, opening the computer and motioning to the screen when it displays the staff page. “If you’re a reporter, and you work for them, then where are you?” 

Jinyoung’s face is white as paper, and Jaebum can see his hands shaking even where they’re clapped against his neck. His dark eyes are swimming with tears now, his voice wavering. “Jaebum, I do work for them, I’m just not an official employee yet, it's probationary, I just moved here––”

_ “Don’t fucking lie to me!”  _ Jaebum shouts, the rage crashing into him like a car accident. He shoves his computer away, unconcerned when it nearly teeters off the edge of the table. Jinyoung looks terrified: if it’s possible for him to lose more color, he does, and he looks like he’s going to drop where he stands. Jaebum tries to lower his voice. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t you fucking lie to me. Tell me who you are, or I’m going to call Youngjae and Jackson and they’ll take you out of here so fucking quick––”

“Jaebum, don’t,” Jinyoung begs, taking a step like he’s coming forward, but stops  when he looks at Jaebum’s face. The tears in his eyes make them shine in the light from the giant window in the living room, and Jaebum wonders disjointedly how he’s going to feel when they finally spill down his face. “Jaebum, let me explain––”

Still no direct answer. Jaebum just coughs up a horrible, bitter laugh and goes to pull his cellphone from his pocket, scrolling to find Youngjae’s number. “I should have known it was too good to be true, for once, I didn’t fuck something up. You’ve been lying to me this whole time, haven’t you?” 

Jinyoung furiously shakes his head, hands migrating into his hair and pulling. “No, Jaebum, I haven’t! I really am from Changwon, and I really do work for the Crime Report! I’ve never lied, I just––”

“You  _ just what?”  _ He snarls, pulling the phone away from his mouth in case Youngjae answers in the middle of something nasty. “You just lied about everything else, then?”

“No, no, you have to listen to me––”

Youngjae answers a second later, when he puts the phone back to his ear. “Jaebum?” 

“Youngjae,” he breathes, and Youngjae makes a frightened noise on the other end of the phone.

“Jaebum,” Jinyoung begs, coming closer, and Jaebum takes a step back. The tears in Jinyoung’s eyes start to overflow now, and he watches the first drop trail down his cheek and along his jawline. “Jaebum,  _ please––” _

“Youngjae, is Mark at the station right now?” 

“Maybe,” Youngjae says. “Are you okay?” 

Jaebum watches as the tears come faster now, spilling down Jinyoung’s face. His heart tears itself in two; he's torn between wanting to wipe them away and wanting to watch him drown in them. 

“You have to let me explain,” Jinyoung cries, hands pulling terrifyingly hard at his hair, coming forward like he’s going to drop to his knees. His voice gets a little louder, more desperate,  _ “Jaebum, please––” _

“I’m fine,” Jaebum says, voice deadly calm, and Youngjae makes a suspicious noise on the other end of the line. “I’m just––”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish, because Jinyoung’s snatches forward and grabs the phone out of his hand, hanging it up before turning and throwing it across the apartment. Jaebum shouts, stepping forward, but then Jinyoung is violently turning back to him. “Will you just  _ listen  _ to me?” he practically screams.  _ “I’m Taeyoung’s brother!”  _

The room comes to a complete, and utter, standstill. 

It’s so deathly quiet in the room after Jinyoung shouts at him that Jaebum can hear the blood rushing in his ears. He can barely hear his own voice when he says, “what?” 

Jinyoung’s face is wet with tears, eyes still swimming, and he wipes at them in frustration with the sleeve of his cardigan. “I’m Taeyoung’s brother.” 

The room feels lopsided, like he’s suddenly standing on the curved end of a pool, water up to his ears and muting all the sound. Jinyoung’s voice sounds slow, like he’s pressing down on the needle of a record player, distorting the sounds. Jaebum’s heartbeat shatters against his ribs, the sound of it so loud in his ears he thinks he might go deaf. 

“What?” 

Jinyoung looks at him, shoulders sagging. “I was going to tell you.” 

“You––” Jaebum starts. Chokes. “You’re––”

Jaebum just watches in numb disbelief as Jinyoung nods. “Yes. I’m his brother.”

So many things go through his head as the shock keeps him rooted in place––where were the signs? The last time he saw Taeyoung’s brother was at Taeyoung’s funeral, when he was seventeen. Taeyoung’s brother would have been fourteen. Memories pass by in his head in rapid succession, all the time that Taeyoung had brought his brother along with them because their mom made him; all the times that Jaebum has ruffled the kid’s hair, mostly ignoring anything he said like he’s sure he would his own brother, if he had one. He remembers Taeyoung’s brother always being there but barely remembers  _ him.  _

The rage that had been building up in him finally breaks, and it’s like fireworks going off in his head as he reaches forward to grab a fistful of Jinyoung’s t-shirt and haul him forward. Jinyoung yelps, hands scrabbling at Jaebum’s wrist to pry him off, but the anger is stronger and Jaebum yanks him so hard he trips and almost drops to his knees. Jaebum picks him up by the front of the shirt, unaffected even when Jinyoung gets his nails into his wrist and digs in with them, trying to make him let go. With a grunt Jaebum shoves Jinyoung into the wall, holding him there with his hand fisted so tightly in his shirt that the collar digs into the younger man’s neck. Jinyoung makes a noise of pain when his back slams into the wall, wincing, but Jaebum’s body merely flashes hotter and hotter. Once Jinyoung realizes he’s not going to get away from where Jaebum’s got him pinned with a hand in his shirt and a leg between his thighs, he lets go of Jaebum’s wrist and sags in defeat. 

“Don’t,” Jaebum snarls, picking Jinyoung up a bit and slamming him back into the wall a little bit. “I don’t want to hear your lies.”

Jinyoung sniffles, eyes hard, still wet with tears. His cheeks shine in the light. “I’m not lying. I kept it from you, and I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. But I’m not lying. I’m his brother.”

Pulling on Jinyoung’s shirt even tighter, Jaebum grinds his teeth together so hard he feels like they’re going to break. “Prove it.”

Jinyoung’s eyes flash, his face changing from that look of defiance into one of uncertainty. He watches Jaebum’s face for a moment, probably contorted in rage, jaw locked. 

“Do you remember that book that Taeyoung always had in his backpack?” 

Jinyoung’s voice startles him, so low and serious that Jaebum can only stare at him, the rage beating loud in his ears fading into a steady background noise. 

“That book Taeyoung had in his backpack. I don’t remember what it is, now, but I’m sure you remember.”

He does. It was  _ To Kill a Mockingbird. _

“He never read that book all the way through, did you know that?” Jinyoung’s voice is calm, but there’s the hint of a quiver behind it. His face is pale and his eyes still swim with tears that threaten to fall. 

Jaebum did know that. Teased him about it senselessly. The rage starts to fade, replaced by the quickened, nervous beating of his heart.

“He had a scar from me, too. On his left arm.” Jinyoung watches him, the tears in his eyes more pronounced now. One spills down his cheek. “We were wrestling. I was six, he was ten. It was right before we found out we had to move to Seoul. He was holding me down and I got scared, and I bit him.” 

Jaebum knows what scar he’s talking about. He remembers tracing it gently with his fingers the first time he and Taeyoung had ever seen each other naked. Remembers the way Taeyoung had laughed when he told Jaebum it’s because  _ his dorky little brother bit him. _

His heart beats uncomfortably hard. Jinyoung just watches him.

“Taeyoung’s favorite color was blue. Do you know know why?” 

Of course Jaebum knows why. He knew Taeyoung inside and out. 

Jinyoung’s voice starts to quiver, the tears spilling now. “Because it reminded him of the sky the day I was born. The bluest sky they’d seen all year, not a cloud in sight.”

Jaebum knows this. Knew how much Taeyoung loved his younger brother. 

Jinyoung clears his throat but it doesn’t get rid of the shake. The look on his face is pure agony, pure heartache. “I know that you have that scar between your shoulder blades because you were teaching Taeyoung how to skate at 2am on a school night. I know that you’re the first boy my brother ever kissed and he’s the first boy you ever kissed back. I know that you loved my brother and that your favorite birthmark was the one above his heart. I know that you were desperate to love and he was desperate to be loved–”

He can’t take it anymore. Jaebum numbly lets Jinyoung go, moving away from him even as he almost slides down the wall. He moves to the counter, leaning on it with both hands, his entire body cold like he’d been doused in ice water. It must be true, then, isn’t it? How else would Jinyoung know these things if Taeyoung himself hadn’t told him? How does his life keep getting flipped over and over and over, and how much more of this can he take before he dies? Before his body just gives up on him, and he goes, leaves everything behind?

So many memories drag themselves from the lake of his thoughts and beach themselves, once by one. He remembers how badly Jinyoung had wanted to be a part of their group when they were younger; four years their junior but almost just as smart. Jaebum had been so oblivious then, but when the memories come now it’s clear to him, he should have seen it from the start. How desperate Jinyoung had been to be with them wherever they went. The way that he’d clung to Jaebum whenever he was invited, always asking him questions and wanting to learn things. He remembers the way he’d always laugh and mess up Jinyoung’s hair, grinning when the younger boy would whine and then pout. Jaebum remembers how Jinyoung would always whisper things to Taeyoung, eyes on Jaebum as he did it, and then Taeyoung would say something to him accompanied by a light slap on the arm. He realizes now, with a horrible jolt, why Jinyoung had looked so familiar when they’d first met: because he’s seen Jinyoung a hundred thousand times before. Just smaller, more soft spoken, and shier. 

He feels the featherlight touch of fingers on his back, Jinyoung’s soft voice following. “Jaebum?”

Jaebum jerks, spinning violently and shoving Jinyoung away from him. His eyes burn with unshed tears but he won’t give Jinyoung the satisfaction of seeing him weak again. “How could you say that? How could you say those things to me?” 

Jinyoung flinches when he shouts, but the tears in his eyes are angry now. He shouts back, “what, the truth? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” 

Coming forward, Jaebum shoves him again, but keeps a hand fisted in his shirt. “How can you say those things like you want them to mean something to you when they meant something to Taeyoung?”

Jinyoung’s face folds in anger, his bottom lip between his teeth. Jaebum feels Jinyoung grab his wrist again, digging in his nails, and this time he can  _ feel  _ it––he can feel everything: the pain in his wrist, the pain in his back, the pain in his heart. The anger and the grief and the uncertainty pound his blood, pushes the tears forward in his eyes. He wants to cry so bad; his life is seemingly falling apart when just hours ago he was telling Jinyoung not to forget about him and now it seems that Jinyoung has  _ never  _ forgotten about him, come all this way, and for what? For revenge? For him? 

“Because I do want them to mean something to me,” Jinyoung spits, nails digging into the skin of his wrist so hard he thinks he might bleed. “I’ve wanted them to mean something to me ever since the first day Taeyoung brought you home. It was wrong, because Taeyoung loved you, but I’ve been in love with you since we were kids, Jaebum.”

Jaebum’s body goes cold for a moment, a memory, small but real and vivid, flashes through him: 

_ It was so hot, but Jaebum was outside anyway, laying on the grass on the Park’s front lawn waiting for Taeyoung to come home. They’d been a thing for two years––it’s not something their parents really liked to talk about directly, but they still loved them, and accepted them, and that was enough. Mrs. Park had asked if he wanted to come inside, but he’d just waved and said  _ No, that’s okay, it’s nice out, I’ll wait right here  _ and she’d just laughed and closed the door. He’d had his eyes closed against the sun, arms behind his head, waiting for their other friend to drop Taeyoung off. It was quiet in the neighborhood. Peaceful. _

_ A few moments later, a familiar voice was next to him, letting out a soft grunt as they hit the grass. Cracking open an eye, Jaebum had looked over to see Taeyoung’s younger brother Jinyoung laying next to him on the grass, wearing jeans rolled up at the ankles and one of Taeyoung’s old shirts. He was cute for thirteen, and Jaebum just knew that he’d be a really stunner when he got older. As if reading his thoughts, Jinyoung had looked over at him.  _

_ “It’s so hot today,” Jinyoung had said, before turning his face back up to the sky and closing his dark eyes.  _

_ Doing the same, Jaebum had hummed. “Feels good, though.” _

_ It had been quiet for a minute, then, until Jinyoung had sighed. “Jaebum hyung.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Can I ask you something?”  _

_ “Sure.” _

_ Jinyoung had hesitated then, but he was thirteen, and Jaebum was seventeen and blonde and cool. “Would you ever date someone younger than you?”  _

_ Jaebum tried to imagine dating anyone who wasn’t Park Taeyoung and laughed a little bit. “What, someone like you?”  _

_ “Yeah.” _

_ The younger boy’s voice was serious. So serious, in fact, that Jaebum’s eyebrows furrowed and he opened his eyes. He had pushed himself up on an elbow, leaning over where Jinyoung had been sprawled on the grass next to him. Jinyoung had opened his eyes, looking at Jaebum with all the seriousness of the world; too much seriousness for someone who's barely thirteen. _

_ “Well, you are handsome, you know. You’ll grow up well, and maybe into those ears, too. So, maybe. But I’m going to be eighteen in January, and that’s not right.” _

_ Jinyoung had smiled at him, so sincere.  _

_ Jaebum had smiled back, shoving him lightly. “But you’re just kidding, right?”  _

_ The look on Jinyoung’s handsome young face had slipped, but only for a moment. It was so quick, a smile so fake it looked natural slipped back into place so easily that Jaebum thought he might have imagined it. He was going to say something else, but then Taeyoung was shouting his name as he slammed a car door and then was throwing himself down on top of Jaebum, showering him in kisses.  _

The memory rocks him back on his heels a little bit, Jinyoung’s face now so similar to the way it had been then; a bit closed off, shy, but more defined and  _ manly,  _ he’s a  _ man  _ now, and he’s a man that Jaebum has had sex with and potentially fallen in love with. But he had hidden this part of himself from Jaebum, and then thrown it on him, saying the words  _ of course I want them to mean something to me, I’ve always wanted them to mean something to me  _ like he’d been in love with Jaebum his whole life. Because, apparently, he had.

How did he miss this? 

When he looks back at him, Jinyoung’s grip on his wrist has loosened, held gently in his fingers. “Jaebum–” 

He doesn’t think about it, just goes for it. He pulls Jinyoung forward by the shirt, crushing their mouths together, and Jinyoung makes a startled noise against his teeth like he’s going to pull away, but Jaebum just pulls him closer until Jinyoung grabs onto his hoodie for dear life. Jinyoung kisses him back, the wetness of his face where the tears had dried but start to flow again rubbing against Jaebum’s as he bites at Jinyoung’s mouth. He’s not really sure if he’s trying to reward him or punish him, but he can’t stop himself; he gets his tongue into Jinyoung’s mouth, licking across his teeth, trying to claim his mouth or break it from the inside, he doesn’t know. 

Jinyoung pants against his mouth as the kiss deepens, heats up. His hands come up to cup Jaebum’s neck, thumbs under his jaw, pressing in like he’s trying to remind Jaebum he’s real. Jaebum pushes Jinyoung’s cardigan roughly off his shoulders; Jaebum’s hoodie comes off quick and rough and the material dries some of the tears on his own face as it does, uncaring who they belong to. Jaebum walks Jinyoung backward toward the bedroom, kissing him and kissing him and kissing him until his mouth starts to hurt. But he doesn’t stop; he stops to rid Jinyoung of his shirt but then gets his lips back to his skin, claiming every square inch for his own, reminding Jinyoung who he is. 

As they shed the rest of their clothes and fall into each other, tears into sweat into tears, Jaebum wonders if he’s only doing this because this is the closest he’ll ever be to Taeyoung ever again. But the deeper he goes, the longer he kisses Jinyoung’s mouth and his neck and his chest, feels the sweet slide of their skin together, the less his brain chants  _ Taeyoung Taeyoung Taeyoung  _ and the more it screams  _ Jinyoung Jinyoung Jinyoung _ ; the two alike but so fundamentally different, and when he bottoms out inside Jinyoung, the memories of Taeyoung slip deeper into his mind. He touches and kisses and bites every inch of Jinyoung’s skin that he can reach as he fucks him into the mattress, the younger man under him thrashing and crying but from pleasure now instead of pain; internal or external. The feeling of Jinyoung’s sweat-slicked skin where it slides against his in a perfect sort of harmony pushes the memories of Taeyoung further and further down until he can’t reach them anymore; inaccessible when he’s with Jinyoung, these two separate entities, both of them on the receiving end of a love that he had thought he’d no longer had to give. Jinyoung, an hour ago just the ghost of his brother’s face, is Jinyoung again, just Jinyoung, and only that. And when Jaebum comes with a shout or a sob, or both, his world that had consisted of Taeyoung burns itself out like a star and then his world is just Jinyoung, only Jinyoung. 

  
  
  
  
  


Jaebum turns his wrist over, looking at the indented crescent moons from Jinyoung’s blunt nails in the low light from his bedside table. “You almost broke the skin.”

Jinyoung, still naked and sleepy where he’s wrapped up in the blankets on Jaebum’s bed, hums and puts his head on Jaebum’s shoulder. He reaches up to wraps his fingers around Jaebum’s wrist, fingertips gently tracing the marks. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. It’s not your fault, really.”

Jinyoung snorts, letting go of his wrist but letting his hand rest on Jaebum’s bare stomach. “I think we’re both a little at fault here.”

He can’t disagree with that. Jaebum covers Jinyoung’s hand with his own, tilting his head to look down at Jinyoung’s hair where it spills over his shoulder, messy and still a bit damp with sweat. “You should have just told me.”

Jinyoung doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then he shifts so that he can look up into Jaebum’s face. He’s struck again but just how  _ beautiful  _ the younger man is: dark eyes framed by impossibly long eyelashes, a sharp jawline that, the last time he had seen it, was still curved with baby fat. His mouth, easily Jaebum’s favorite part of his face, thick and soft with barely the hint of a cupid’s bow. He thinks that, reluctance or no, he would have fallen for Jinyoung anyway. 

“I know,” Jinyoung says softly, blinking slowly. “And I wanted to. But I didn’t know how. I know how much you loved Taeyoung. How destroyed you were by his death. So much more so than Yoojin ever was.” He says this part a little bitterly, and it surprises him. 

“Jinyoung-ah...”

He feels the younger man get tense under him, Jinyoung turning his face away to look at their intertwined hands on Jaebum’s stomach. His voice is cold. “Yoojin never liked Taeyoung. He said he did, and Taeyoung was sure that Yoojin liked him in his own way. But I knew better.”

Jaebum wants to interject, but he doesn’t. He thinks that, just maybe, now that the truth is out, they can grieve Taeyoung together. 

“I saw the way Yoojin looked at Taeyoung when Taeyoung was looking at you, or talking about me.  Yoojin never noticed me. Not that you did, either, really, but you at least talked to me and  _ cared  _ about me. But Yoojin never noticed me, and it allowed me to watch him. He was so cold, so closed off, so  _ different.  _ I never understood why you and Taeyoung, two of the happiest people in the world, would spend time with him.”

Jaebum puts a hand on Jinyoung’s forehead, gently sweeping the hair back. “He wasn’t always like that. He was funny, and he was kind, too. He loved me, and I loved him. Neither of us had siblings. My parents were dead, and my grandparents were nice, but they were old. A bit forgetful. So we found a family in each other.” 

Jinyoung nods. “I know. But he wasn’t that way with Taeyoung. He hated Taeyoung.” 

“Oh, Jinyoung, I don’t think so––”

“He did. That’s why he––” Jinyoung sighs, bitter and frustrated. He curls closer to Jaebum, his hand tightening where Jaebum is holding it. 

“Why he what?” Jaebum asks, curious, so unused to being able to talk to someone about the Yoojin he knew when he was growing up. He’s so accustomed to saying “Well, you didn’t know him like I knew him” or having to explain the way Yoojin acted that it feels a little unreal to talk about him like this. 

“Nothing,” Jinyoung sighs, yawning. Jaebum feels the tug of curiosity in his chest––what had he been about to say? But it’s clear to him that Jinyoung is tired from the rough afternoon they’d had when he rolls over, taking the blankets with him, and falls asleep a mere few minutes later. 

Jaebum wants to sleep, but he still feels a bit revved up and jittery. He gets out of bed, pulling on underwear and a light layer of jeans and a hoodie before digging around in his bedside table for cigarettes. He pulls them out when he finds them, digging up a lighter and quietly padding his way out of the bedroom and out onto the balcony off the living room. Jaebum smiles a little bit when he thinks about how funny Jinyoung would think this is––he’d given Jaebum a hard time about being a stereotypical detective, whiskey and all, and he’d probably die laughing if he saw Jaebum with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He doesn’t smoke them all the time; hardly ever, really, but it’s too late for coffee and he needs something to calm his nerves down before he goes to sleep.

He folds his arms over the railing, hands hanging over the sides and the cigarette between his lips as he puffs on it lazily. The cold wind whipping off the Han a few miles away makes his eyes burn, but he looks down at the lights of the city and is surprised when his heart clenches at how beautiful is. He’s never left Seoul for more than a few days, and when it looks like this, so wondrously intricate and neon and busy, he doesn’t think he’ll ever leave it. The hoodie isn’t doing much to protect him from the cold, especially since he’s not wearing a shirt underneath it, but the sharp wind and frigid air clears his head of the fog that’s been hanging around it all day. 

_ Taeyoung’s brother _ . His eyes follow the lines of the distant headlights on the highways. Jinyoung is Taeyoung’s brother. His last remaining connection to Taeyoung, and to the life he’d had before it all went to hell. What had Taeyoung been about to say about Yoojin? Jaebum blinks slowly, eyes bleary from the wind. He drags on the cigarette, pulling it from his mouth and holding it between two of his fingers as he just watches the city sluggishly move along and flash colors; red and yellow and green and blue. Could he really think that Yoojin hated Taeyoung that much? Jaebum absently wonders if Jinyoung thinks that Yoojin could have had anything to do with––

He’s interrupted from his thoughts when he hears a steady knocking on his front door. Jaebum’s eyebrows furrow, and he checks his watch in the dim light from the lamp in the living room spilling onto the balcony. 12:19 AM is a strange time for someone to be knocking on the door to his apartment, but Youngjae has woken him up at stranger times. Jaebum stubs the cigarette out in the ashtray, pulling the sliding glass door shut quietly behind him. The knocking comes again, insistent but quiet. Jaebum peeks into his bedroom to see if Jinyoung’s awake, but the younger man is fast asleep, covers pulled over his shoulder and breathing evenly. 

Jaebum approaches the door quietly, listening for the radio chatter of the walkie-talkies attached the the officers’ belts, but the hallway beyond the door is silent. There’s not even a whisper of sound to give away who it might be, but the knocking comes again.  _ Knock. Knock. Knock.  _ It’s almost creepily steady, and the hair raises up on his arms as he scares himself with a hundred different scenarios. Finally too hopped on the anticipation, he doesn’t bother looking through the peephole before he unlatches the door, throwing it open.

“Can I help you––”

  
Jaebum barely has time to look at who it is before they’re swinging something toward him, something heavy and black. He doesn’t even make a sound when it connects with the side of his head, the world shuttering to black as he falls to his knees and then to the carpet of the hallway outside his front door.

 

 


	3. Where Is Home?

_ Drip. Drip. Drip.  _

It almost feels like a dream, the way the sound of water dripping from somewhere seems to echo inside his brain. 

_ Drip. Drip. Drip. _

Jaebum struggles to wake up. The sound of the water is consistent, annoying. His eyebrows stitch together, his eyes still closed. His chest heaves painfully, tight like there’s rope bound across him and constricting his lungs. He screams at himself to wake up, to get up and to turn off the faucet, the sound of the water starting to drive him crazy. But the closer and closer he swims to consciousness, the more he can feel the pain that radiates from the back of his head behind his ear. The pain, as it grows, starts to wake him up: the dripping of the water grows steadier but less like an echo. His left ear is ringing, and when he finally starts to blink he can feel the wetness trailing down his neck. 

Eyes open, he can barely see anything with how dim it is. There’s a single lightbulb hanging from the decrepit ceiling, the metal skeleton of the building warped and twisted and rusting. He can see the through to the floors above him from the missing ceiling panels, and they fade into indistinguishable blackness the higher up they go. The walls are just as rusted and faded, riddled with what looks like bullet holes, torn from the framework here and there. Jaebum tries to stand up, and panic floods him when he realizes that he can’t: his head snaps down, a low groan escaping at the pain that throbs in his brain as he does. 

It felt like there’s rope around his chest because there  _ is:  _ he’s tied to a chair, his legs bound to the legs of it and his hands behind his back. The rope across his chest is too tight, barely giving him enough room to inhale deeply before he’s coughing. Jaebum raises his shoulder to nudge it against his ear that’s still ringing faintly, and he’s alarmed when the green material comes away stained red with blood. He sees where the blood has run down his neck and dried, stiff on his skin and making the collar of his hoodie scratch uncomfortably at his throat. He tries to think of how he got here, but there’s nothing: there was the fight yesterday with Jinyoung, the sex, the make-up, and then nothing. Jaebum faintly remembers smoking a cigarette on the balcony before it all disappears into murkiness. 

His head jerks up when a door at the far end of the room creaks open and bangs shut, making him jump. The single lightbulb hanging above him a few feet away only illuminates so far, and whoever just came in remains a shadow on the sides of the room as they slowly walk toward him. Jaebum’s heart sets a shattering rhythm in his chest: he’s been chased by suspects, shot at, nearly stabbed. But he’s never been  _ kidnapped _ , and he schools his features into a blank look that he hopes is as convincing as he thinks it is to keep himself alive.

The voice that comes to him through the dark is rough, deep and gritty like walking through rocks. The man sounds older, and Jaebum can tell he’s bigger just by the outline of his shadow where he’s stopped just outside the ring of light. “Im Jaebum. Never thought I’d see you again.”

His heart pounds, but he doesn’t reply, unsure what to say.  _ Who are you  _ seems too typical and it’s doubtful he’d get any real answers.

“Not gonna talk, huh?” the man finally steps forward into the light. He’s bigger, much older, with a grizzled face and the shaggy start of a grey and white beard. His hair is long and greasy, the same grey and white strands pushed behind his ears. His darkly tanned face is lined, and Jaebum can guess that he’s anywhere from his early fifties to his late sixties, but it's so dark in the room and the man is so shadowed that it’s hard to tell. The man’s thick arms are exposed where he’s wearing a grease-stained, tattered white tank top and Jaebum starts to feel nauseous. All the crime dramas he’s seen, he’s always rolled his eyes at things like this, always  _ Aish, this would never happen,  _ but his confidence takes a blow when he’s right smack in the middle of it. 

The man smiles at him, teeth yellow and crooked and terrifying. He’s got a baseball bat gripped loosely in one hand, the aluminum glinting off the light where it rests across his shoulders. “Really, now, Jaebum. You’re not going to talk to me?” 

“What do you want me to say?” His heart continues to beat unsteadily. “Seems like you know who I am, but I don’t know who you are. That puts me at a disadvantage.”

Clearly upset by this response, the man darts forward and slams a fist across Jaebum’s face. Pain explodes in his cheek, spreading to his lips where his teeth break the skin and blood wells up in his mouth. He sucks in breath after breath, eyes squeezing shut as the initial pain slows to a dull throb. The coppery taste of blood stains his mouth but he swallows it back, eyes on the man again.

“You always did think a little too highly of yourself.”

Jaebum shrugs but doesn’t reply.

Sighing, the man drops the bat to the rusty metal floor with a clang and then squats down in front of Jaebum. The man’s dark eyes are empty where they meet his, and he feels the sweat break out at his temples and down his back. “You really don’t remember me?”

He pretends to think for a moment, the cut on his bottom lip splitting when he smiles. “No, I don’t.”

Jaebum thinks he’s ready for it this time, but he isn’t. The man strikes him again, this time from the other side, and the ring on the man’s finger opens a slice underneath Jaebum’s eye. He grunts with the pain, biting down on his split lip to stay quiet, feeling the blood where it drips down his face like tears. Jaebum just looks up at the man, now standing between his legs and looking angry. 

“I want you to think about it, Jaebum.  _ Think.”  _

Jaebum tries. He thinks about all the cases he’s worked, all the people he’s put in jail over the years, the families that had threatened him in the courtroom when the case closed. Men and women alike, all the people who would go to jail for their crimes thinking that he’d wrong them. Anyone that he put away who might have gotten out and been hellbent on getting revenge. But even as his mind turns over case after case after case, he comes up empty handed each time, the identity of the man completely lost on him. After a few minutes of silence, Jaebum just shrugs.    
“Sorry, man. I got nothing.”

Pain bursts across his eyes when he gets punched again. The man’s fist connects with his nose, and he gasps when it starts to gush blood. Jaebum coughs, blood spattering the man’s white t-shirt, and Jaebum’s not ready for the next punch when he yells at Jaebum for staining his shirt and lands a fist in his stomach. He feels like he’s going to puke, stomach rolling, the blood in his mouth running down the back of his throat and covering the lower half of his face like a mask. When Jaebum’s head finally rolls back to look up at him, the man smiles, landing another punch into Jaebum’s stomach that has him bent over as far as the rope will let him and wheezing blood onto his hoodie. His nose probably isn’t broken, but the blood leaking from it dries on his lips and is bitter and coppery in his mouth. 

Wheezing, Jaebum looks up. His shoulders are starting to burn with how hard his arms are pulled behind his back, and his wrists are raw and wet with blood where he’s been working them against the rope. “I’m sorry, I––” he gasps. “I don’t know.”

The air outside is cold, but it’s hot in the room and the humidity from the burst pipe leaking water onto the floor only makes it worse. Jaebum’s eyes blink lazily, head swimming with pain. The man crouches down in front of him again, hands between his knees. “Yoojin always said you weren’t nearly as smart as you thought you were.”

Jaebum’s eyes fly open at Yoojin’s name. His heart starts to beat faster, sucking in a deep breath.  _ Yoojin? How does he know Yoojin?  _

“How do you know Yoojin?” Jaebum asks, gasping in breath after breath, his throat starting to close with panic. 

The man smiles, crooked and awful. “Who else do you think spent time with Yoojin on the weekends when he wasn’t shoved up your ass?” 

Jaebum’s heart stops. The man just keeps smiling at him, and smiling at him, as the world narrows down to a tunnel. His mind works in overdrive as he tries to remember if he’d ever seen the person that Yoojin disappeared with on the weekends that they didn’t hang out, but the memories are foggy underneath the years and the hurt and the pain in his face. Jaebum remembers how weird Yoojin always was when he’d come back from those weekends––covered in new bruises, his tongue sharper, more violent when they played sports at the park. But Yoojin had always laughed it off, and Jaebum had always laughed it off: the bruises would fade, his tongue would soften, and the weirdness would dissipate. But there were times, he remembers, when it took longer: the night he found out about Taeyoung and Jaebum together. He disappeared for days after that, missing school, and came back so angry and hateful that Jaebum was a little afraid of him. But even that had faded, though it took longer. And then, suddenly, Jaebum remembers how Yoojin had been a few days before Taeyoung’s death: jittery, always looking over his shoulders, sharp and unforgiving, though he’d usually grovel at Jaebum’s feet a few minutes later saying he was just nervous about driving.

And Jaebum had believed him.

Horror creeps up his throat, pulling a sound out of him somewhere between a sob and a gasp. “What did you do to him?” He’s not sure if he’s asking about the past or the present.

“Nothing he wasn’t asking for. He wanted me to teach him how to fight, so I taught him how to fight.”

And now Jaebum remembers this, too––the rumors in the hallways of their high school that there was someone older who would teach them how to fight, if they really wanted it. Someone much older than them, who’d supposedly been to prison and, for a few extra won, would teach you how to make prison shivs so sharp they’d cut through your jeans. He remembers seeing a guy hanging around the edges of the high school, talking to some of the more awful kids with his head bent, long hair hiding his face. But Jaebum had just thought he was someone’s brother, maybe dealing them pot or hooking them up with girls way too old for them. But, as it is, he was just teaching kids how to  _ fight each other.  _

“You piece of shit––”

Jaebum doesn’t even get to finish before the man’s face draws up, his fist landing in Jaebum’s stomach. He gasps, barely pulling in a breath before the fist lands against his cheek, his temple, his mouth. There’s so much blood draining down the back of his throat that he’s not sure where it came from anymore, be it his lips or his nose or his face, and it runs down his chin like water. Jaebum sags, the rope around his chest the only thing keeping him from completely falling from the chair. His breath is uneven, choppy and stuttering as each inhale is painful. Jaebum finally lets his head roll back, the front of his green hoodie completely stained with blood. 

His voice is thick, and the thought comes out slow. “You were that piece of shit who wanted to fuck a fifteen year old, weren’t you?”

Because along with the rumors that he’d teach kids how to fight, he’d also teach kids how to fuck. But that was for free, as long as they’d wanted it. He remembers the rumors of kids who’d slept with him, girls  _ and  _ boys, and how he was disgusting and aggressive and had always regretted it after when he’d dumped them from the car and left them there. Jaebum doesn’t have time to string together another thought before the man is whipping out a knife and slashing it across Jaebum’s chest. 

He purposefully holds back, merely slicing the front of his hoodie and barely breaking the skin with the tip of it, but it burns where it starts to bleed. Jaebum hisses, teeth grinding together painfully. The pain spreads from his chest and up to his neck, and he can barely keep his thoughts together now. The man just comes down to eye level again, knife point against Jaebum’s neck.

“Let me tell you a story. Do you want to hear a story?” 

Jaebum nods, as much as his body will let him.

The man digs the knife point into Jaebum’s neck but not hard enough to break skin. “Kim Yoojin found me and asked me to teach him how to fight. I don’t know why. It wasn’t my job to ask. He wanted to learn how to fight, and he wanted to learn how to fight dirty. So I taught him.

“I saw Yoojin a lot, and more so when he turned sixteen. There was an anger about him, one that I recognized in myself. Kindred spirits, the two of us.” The man chuckles and Jaebum’s stomach flips. “So I taught him how to fight. He told me about his life, about his best friend Jaebum, about how ‘Jaebum thinks he’s gay and in love with his friend Taeyoung’. This upset him, did you know? That you were in love with a boy. Yoojin didn’t understand it. I didn’t care. 

“But the rage in that boy...wow. It grew and grew every day. He’d tell me every weekend I saw him ‘Jaebum and Taeyoung are still together. I don’t know what to do’. And it just grew. And grew. When he turned seventeen and was taller, stronger, he finally told me. ‘Woohyun-ah, I want to break them up, that’s what I want to do’. And I told him, I can’t help you with that, I teach kids how to fight, not break up their friends. And that look in his eye when he turned on me and told me ‘Taeyoung is not my friend’, boy,” the man shivers theatrically, eyes glinting when he looks back up at Jaebum. “Even I was a little afraid of him. So I asked him, why are you telling me this? And he says to me, ‘ I want to learn to fight so that I can fight him. Taeyoung. Maybe if I beat him, he’ll stop being friends with us’.

“And I thought to myself, this kid is crazy! But he always pulled money from his pockets and I wasn’t one to turn it away. So I taught him to fight like you do in prison: punch low, use your fingers. Grab, kick, use your knees and elbows. The whole nine yards. And he says to me, one of the last days I saw him, ‘Woohyun-ah, come with me. I want you to see me fight him’. And, you know? None of my students ever asked me to do that before.” 

“Students?” Jaebum says, choking a laugh in disbelief. “You can’t call them students––”

“Be  _ quiet _ ,” the man says, cracking the back of his hand across Jaebum’s cheek, the knife blade coming dangerously close to his forehead. “So you know what? I went with him. The night he told Taeyoung to meet him by that old road, I’m sure you know the one. By one of the channels. No one ever used it except kids who wanted to drive their cars real fast and not get caught. And Yoojin made me wait on the bank of the channel, watching him as he threw the first punch. I heard the other kid scream––he hadn’t been expecting it. Both his hands came up to cover his face, but you know Yoojin. He was tall. So big that he overpowered this kid so easily. The fight lasted maybe a couple of minutes before the kid dropped the ground and Yoojin started screaming.”

Jaebum’s heart is pounding in his chest, so loud he can hear it in his ears. This is it––this is where he finds out what really happened to Taeyoung, what happened with Yoojin, this terrifying man in front of him laying out all the details he’d been missing for  _ weeks  _ as though they were a gift for him.

The man sighs. “So I run up the bank and you know what? He’d hit the kid so hard he’s broken his neck. I didn’t even think that was possible.” the man laughs as Jaebum’s stomach bottoms out. “He was just there, on the ground, face covered in blood and his head lolled to the side like a rag doll. Yoojin wouldn’t stop  _ screaming–– _ I had to hit him a couple of times for him to stop, and then he was clutching at my shirt, begging, ‘Woohyun, Woohyun, help me make this look like an accident, please, help me’. So I told him to go get his car where it was parked down the road and to drive it as fast as he could around this corner, and to drop out of the driver’s seat and to the ground once he did. The car crashed itself perfectly––completely shattered that front windshield, and it was so, so easy to bloody Yoojin’s face to make it look like he’d been sitting behind the wheel.”

The man shrugs. “From there it was just a matter of using some of the glass to cut that kid’s face to make it look like he’d gone through it. Yoojin held him for a little bit, for authenticity or because he was really fucked up over killing him is anyone’s guess. That’s when Yoojin told me to fuck off and to never come around again. He told me he’d keep this a secret to his grave as long as I never came back. And you know? I was fine with that. I waited until Yoojin finally tore off into the night streaked in this kid’s blood to your house to leave. And then I left.”

Jaebum’s stomach rolls painfully before he leans forward and dry heaves, wanting so badly to rid himself of the feeling in his stomach but nothing comes up except the blood that drips from his mouth to the floor. Woohyun just watches him with disinterest as Jaebum chokes and gags on the blood that comes up from his stomach. The thought rushes through his head, over and over like a broken record: Yoojin hitting Taeyoung so hard his neck breaks, Taeyoung on the ground, dead, then covered in blood when they crashed the car. Jaebum sluggishly remembers the night that Yoojin had run to his house, streaking blood on the front door as he pounded on it. He feels his stomach contract, puking more blood and bile onto the floor when he thinks about the way Yoojin had fallen into him when Jaebum had opened the door, sobbing and covering them both in Taeyoung’s blood, chanting  _ it was an accident it was an accident I swear to God  _ and he didn't understand then, of course it was an accident, why would he have to clarify? And now he realizes that Yoojin had told him that night, in his own way. But Jaebum didn't get it, and they'd carried on their lives like Taeyoung had just died tragically and Yoojin had almost died in the same accident and everyone felt bad for him and no one lived happily ever after, where they were alive and Taeyoung wasn’t. 

“Yoojin doesn’t know that I took a picture of that kid’s body that night while he went to get the car. Just in case I needed it. And it seems like I did––once I heard through the grapevine that Yoojin had become a cop, I had to end it. That’s why I sent him the photo of that kid’s body at the police station. Told him to do whatever it takes to get himself thrown in jail or I was going to expose the whole thing, my own sentence be damned.” the man frowns at him in mock sympathy. “I didn’t think he’d take it out on you, though.”

Sighing again, the man actually stands up and starts to pace in front of Jaebum, who’s barely holding on to consciousness. “For years it was quiet. He went to jail and disappeared, you became a homicide detective, everything was good. And then my cousin gets a phone call from someone about a year or two after Yoojin is released. Says they know some things and that they wanted to find me. So Junhong––”

“Junhong?” Jaebum gasps. “Bae Junhong?” 

The man grins. “The one and only.”

So Junhong had lied to them––played Jaebum like a fiddle. Anger burns low in his chest but it's unable to pierce through the pain.

“So this kid calls Junhong and tells him he knows about what happened to that kid one night. So I get on the phone and I ask him who he is and he just tells me he’s ‘Taeyoung’s brother’.” The man snorts. “Like I gave a shit about that. So he––”

Woohyun’s next few sentences fade to static as Jaebum’s eyes widen in his face, the realization hitting. Jinyoung had called Junhong, and asked him about this guy. Jinyoung had  _ talked  _ to this guy––this guy who, by the way this story is going, killed Yoojin and his grandparents and is going to kill Jaebum next. Pain flares up at yet another lie being unearthed; Jinyoung had known this whole time not only that what happened to Taeyoung wasn’t an accident, but that the person involved that night had killed Yoojin? Jaebum thinks that, with how many times he’s risen and fallen in this life, ending it tonight wouldn’t be so bad.

“––but of course I don’t tell him anything. Tell him, ‘nice try, kid’, and hang up. But at that point, I knew I had to keep an eye on Yoojin. For a while he just drifted. Province to province, city to city, doing odd jobs and sleeping on benches. But then he’d started heading towards Changwon, and I knew that that kid’s parents still lived there.” The man shrugs again, nonchalant. “So when I found out through my sources that Yoojin had been to their house and that his brother had left shortly after, and that Yoojin was headed toward Seoul, I knew he was coming to find you. And I had to stop him.”

Jaebum’s heart thuds painfully against his ribs. Tears well up in his eyes but he can’t focus long enough to keep them from falling. The salt burns the cuts on his face; the salt finds it's way to his heart and rubs into it like a giant, open wound.

Woohyun finally stops, standing in front of Jaebum. He uses the tip of the knife to tilt Jaebum’s head up until he’s looking at him, eyes swollen and blurry with tears, the last line of his consciousness so thin he can barely grasp it. The tip of the knife digging into the underside of his jaw keeps him awake, blood beading around it when he swallows and it breaks skin. 

“Yoojin had never been more weak or sorry than when I found him in the park that night. The kid he’d been at seventeen was gone, completely burned away, replaced by someone desperate to be forgiven, weepy, and weak. And he begged, did you know? He begged, and begged, and begged.” Woohyun smiles. “And I want you to beg, just like he did. Beg for your life, Detective.”

Jaebum’s eyes open, though his eyelids flutter and he struggles. He thinks of his mother’s face, so beautiful in the light from the window where she would read to him, a smile on her face. Then she goes, ripped from him by sickness. He thinks of Taeyoung’s face, so handsome and bright, plump mouth turned up in a grin, hands behind his head. And then he’d been taken, too, by an accident turned into murder. Jaebum thinks of Yoojin: the brother he’d so desperately wanted growing up, and the brother he so easily found at ten years old. The times they’d spent together, late nights, early mornings, the way they’d fallen on each other and wept for hours after Taeyoung’s funeral, the way they’d steeled themselves the next day. He thinks of the way that he’d wanted to die the day he faced Yoojin in court, telling them what happened, how Yoojin had beat him nearly senseless and then fled. He thinks of how Yoojin had disappeared, taken what he’d thought was the last of his trust with him, and then he’d ended up dead, ripped from him.

And then he thinks of Jinyoung. The boy who’d loved him for so long, grown into this man that so easily turned Jaebum’s life upside down like it was nothing to him. The first time he’d ever seen Jinyoung’s face, struck by how handsome and familiar, the glasses pushed up his nose by a delicate hand, recognizing his name but never putting two and two together; never thinking in a million years he’d ever see someone from that part of his life again. He thinks of the way that Jinyoung had argued with him, spat back at him, turned loose his anger and then corralled it somehow in the same breath in a way that no one has ever been able to do before. And Jaebum thinks of the home he’d somehow found in the lines that radiated from the corners of Jinyoung’s eyes when he smiled, or in the sound of his breath as it left him on a quiet moan of his name,  _ Jaebum-ah,  _ whispered so delicately like glass. He thinks of the way that Jinyoung had gotten his love so easily and so shamelessly and then snatched it from him by omitting the greatest truths of himself: who he was, why he was here. Jaebum can say with a certainty that he loves Park Jinyoung, despite the hardship. But could Jinyoung say the same for him? Has Jinyoung only come this far into his life to get the answers that he needed before he, too, is ripped from him? He thinks that he’d be okay with Jinyoung being the last thing to get torn from him, taking the last bit of his heart with him as he goes. 

And so Jaebum smiles, with the last of his energy. Eyes open, he looks at Woohyun.

He’s ready for it. Jaebum steels himself against how he imagines the knife blade will come down across his throat and drown him in his own blood. And he thinks that, for all the time he spends bleeding for the people he loves, it is a fitting end.

“No. I won’t beg.” 

Woohyun’s eyes flash, and Jaebum closes his eyes gently when the light glints off the knife blade. He hears Woohyun pull back, a breath sucked in––

The door at the far end of the room explodes inward, and suddenly there is a cacophony of sound as men and women in armored clothing flood into the room like water. Woohyun turns, startled, but there’s a single echoing  _ BANG  _ of gunfire before he drops to the floor, knife skidding. Jaebum’s head rolls down, watching in disbelief at the red stain that blooms across Woohyun’s dirty white shirt like a rose. The edges of Jaebum’s vision go grey and fuzzy as he looks at it, and he wonders distantly why, why? He had been so close to being freed of the pain that keeps getting piled on him, heart so scarred it's a wonder that it beats at all. He hears a familiar voice in the fray, the loudest over all of them.

“Where is he?” it's Mark’s voice, loud and high-pitched and frantic. Suddenly Mark is in front of him, on his knees between Jaebum’s legs. He can feel Mark’s large hands on his face but the touch is distant, like there’s a layer between his hands and Jaebum’s cheeks. “Hey,” Mark says, voice quiet, and Jaebum’s eyelids flutter as he looks up. Mark’s face is flushed, sweaty, written in panic. He can see Mark’s gun in the shoulder holster, laying against his ribcage. Jaebum’s eyes roll up to meet Mark’s, but the breath wheezing out of him is starting to pick up and he’s starting to tunnel out.

“Hey, hey,” Mark says, trying to hold his head up where Jaebum starts to sag. He feels Mark slap his cheek a little bit, the sharp pain making his eyes open but they slip shut a moment later. He’s so, so tired, so in pain; he just wants to sleep. Mark shakes him. “Hey, stay with me buddy, okay? You’re gonna be alright. Jaebum, stay with me.” Someone cuts the rope from behind his chair and around his wrists, and he sags forward into Mark’s arms. 

“Jaebum, you’re gonna be alright. You’re gonna be okay,” Mark says, barking orders for people to clear the room when the EMTs show up. 

“How do you know?” he says, but he slips underneath the waves when they come and is unsure if he said it at all  
  
  
  
  


The pain wakes him up before anything else.

He sighs weakly, his face feeling like one big wound where it throbs dully as his eyes flutter open. The room is bright, the overhead fluorescents reflecting off the pure white of the tile and walls, and he squints as he comes to. His left eye doesn’t open all the way, swollen nearly all the way shut, and he lifts his head to look around at all the people crowded in his room at the foot of the bed.

There’s a bunch of officers from the station, notably Mark, Youngjae, and Jackson. With them are a few doctors, their heads bent together and talking to each other quietly as though they’re afraid to wake up him. The officers are all standing around and whispering to each other: from where he’s laying, Jaebum can see how tired and pale Mark looks, his shoulder holster still on and his white shirtfront gone a rusty red color with dried blood. Youngjae and Jackson look worried, but otherwise clean, and Jaebum hopes that they weren’t there during the rescue mission, if they can even call it that. Youngjae looks at him, face pulling up in a look of relief when he realizes that Jaebum’s awake.

It hurts to breathe, the bandage on his bare chest pulling at his skin when he inhales. “Mark.”

A hush falls over the whole room. Mark turns all the way to face him, looking at him head on now. His hands, still stained with the same blood that’s on his shirt, grip the railing at the foot of his bed. The older man’s face is gaunt, shadowed and pale, but the look in his eyes is all relief. “Jaebum. You’re awake.”

Jaebum can’t articulate the way the look on Mark’s face makes him feel. He tries to avoid it by asking, “did you kill him?” 

Mark closes his eyes. He opens them a moment later, turning to usher everyone out of the room under his breath. Once they’ve all filed out of the room and it’s just the two of them, he closes the door quietly and comes back to stand at the foot of the hospital bed again, dark eyes heavy. Mark’s stare is nerve-wracking in it's intensity: Jaebum is used to brushing off the concern that people show for him, though, without really noticing, it seems to have gotten harder the past few weeks. Jaebum swallows hard. 

“Mark, did you––”

“No. I didn’t.”

Jaebum sags back against the bed in relief, eyes on the ceiling. He blinks rapidly, to keep himself from crying or just to remind himself he’s alive he’s not sure. The memory of the gunshot that had echoed through the small room and the subsequent bloom of bright color against the man’s chest where he’d fallen at Jaebum’s feet is a little watery, but he remembers how disappointed he’d been: disappointed that, if he’d been dead, they’d never get to prosecute him. Disappointed that it hadn’t been him, instead. He closes his eyes before the tears have time to well.

Jaebum tilts his head back down to see Mark still watching him with that same intense look. “Did you want to?”

Mark is quiet for a moment, knuckles white where he’s gripping the railing of the hospital bed. Jaebum’s chest hurts, the long slice across it shallow but sore, and his breaths come unevenly with the pain. The longer he looks at Mark the more aware he is of the sore spots on his face, and he reaches up to feel it. Jaebum winces as his fingers prod the swelling in his cheeks, trailing along the slice underneath his eye where he remembers the man’s ring cutting his face open. 

Finally, after watching Jaebum poke and prod at his own face, Mark looks down. “Yes.”

Jaebum swallows. “You could have. Why didn’t you?” 

Mark sighs, turning away from the bed, and Jaebum is worried for a moment that Mark is going to leave. But he just finds a chair sitting against the wall and drags it close, next to Jaebum’s head and sitting down heavily in it. Mark looks at this hands where they’re folded in his lap for a moment, and Jaebum notices that, while the skin is mostly clean, there’s dried blood under his nails and staining his nail beds. Jaebum’s heart suddenly feels a bit heavy at the fact that Mark was the one who found him. 

“Because,” the older man finally says, looking up. His dark eyes are tired, circles pressed into the skin underneath them like bruises. “I knew that you wouldn’t want me to. That if I had, there would be nothing.”

“What do you mean?” 

“There would be nothing for you. No closure. No real closure, anyway. We know he told you everything––he made that perfectly clear to us when he came to in the ambulance. So you know the truth, now, about what happened––”

Jaebum cuts him off. “Isn’t that closure?” 

Mark’s eyes search his face for a moment. “You tell me. Would you be satisfied if he was dead? Would you be able to live the rest of your life in some semblance of peace knowing what happened, knowing that he was dead and that he was never going to jail? That he would never face anyone for his crimes? Especially when the one person he hurt the most is you.” 

Jaebum swallows hard. It’s interesting to him how he’s spent so much time keeping his back mostly turned away from Mark, keeping the distance that he affords to people he considers close to him, and yet Mark has him pinned down to his core. Mark has always been able to see through him a little more easily than anyone else, and Jaebum is, for a change, ever grateful for him. He wonders if his near death experience has anything to do with his new found ability to accept that there’s people in his life that care about him. 

“There would be nothing for you. No trial, no chance to see him put away, to actually face the law for what he’s done. Being dead isn’t good enough for you. You want him to suffer.”

And, it seems, Mark understands this part of him, too. It is the side of himself that he is not proud of, but he can’t argue that it isn’t there: because he’s right. Woohyun’s death would mean nothing, leave him with nothing. A loose end just burned at the tip and unusable; but with him alive, Jaebum can see him one last time, can watch the suffering in his eyes as he pleads to a jury one way or another that he’s innocent. Whereas he was so convinced that he was ready and willing to die when Woohyun had the knife poised above his head, he thinks now that, perhaps, that’s not quite true. That maybe he survived blow after blow because he was supposed to see it all through to the end; supposed to catch the bad guy, save the city, get the girl. Be a hero. He swallows when he realizes most of those aren’t true. 

Jaebum doesn’t answer him. There’s really nothing to say in response: Mark is right, and there’s no use fighting it one way or the other. They just stare at each other for a really long time–Mark looking at him, edges of his handsome face sharp but worn down, the shadows under his eyes more pronounced in unison with the tension that pulls the rest of his lean body taut. Despite being able to carry the weight of Mark’s concern for him a little easier now, the intense way Mark seems to be staring through him like he’s reading the inside of his heart is making him anxious. Jaebum tries to avoid looking at the rust colored stain across Mark’s white shirt, but he has trouble keeping his eyes away from it for long. He points at it with a bandaged hand, wondering absently what happened to it but pushing the thought away from his brain for now.

“Whose blood is that?” 

Mark half scoffs at him, an eyebrow raised. “Whose blood do you think it is?” 

“Is it mine or his?” 

He barely hesitates. “It's yours.” 

“How long have you been awake?” 

Mark just eyes him carefully. “Two days.”

Jaebum’s chest shrinks. He’s been hurt so many times, over and over, that he never stopped to wonder if the attitude he’s carried for so long was doing an equal amount of hurting. He sighs. “I’m sorry.” 

It goes quiet again, Mark looking at him like he’s looking through him, but then the older man’s face breaks into a tired half smile and he’s leaning up to gently shove at Jaebum’s shoulder. “Aish,” Mark mumbles, rolling his eyes when Jaebum winces theatrically. “Did the near death experience make you soft?” 

“Maybe,” he says, lightly, but honestly. Mark understands and laughs. 

“Even if you’d said no, I would know that you’re lying.” 

Jaebum, tired and sore, finds that, despite being those things, he’s actually quite content to have a normal conversation with Mark. He also distinctly remembers Youngjae also telling him that he’s not very good at lying. “How’s that?” 

Mark smiles, wide and real. “Tell me about Jinyoung.” 

Jaebum’s heart stutters in his chest at the name, so many things flashing before him at the mere mention of him. Mark just seems satisfied at his reaction, Jaebum caught off guard with his mouth open and his eyes wide, like he’d been about to argue but nothing comes out. He had yet to even think of Jinyoung––and now, he’s unsure what to think at all. The boy who had crept in his life not once, but twice, the second time with what kind of intention? Malicious, or otherwise? His heart throbs when he doesn’t know. And it seems unfair that the handsome reporter, so familiar with the intelligent eyes, would be able to crack through Jaebum’s shell like no one else has before; he wonders, then, if he was just genetically predisposed to love the Park boys, since they had both loved him. Jinyoung especially, it seems, who had confessed to loving Jaebum for his entire life. Bitterness explodes inside him like a roman candle held too close to the chest.

“You know who he is,” Jaebum says, wishing that the bitterness wouldn’t color his voice so heavily. The next part he says accidentally, “probably better than I do.” 

Jaebum looks away when Mark cocks an eyebrow. Mark’s voice is quiet. “What happened?”

_ What didn’t happen? _ Jaebum scoffs a laugh even though it’s not funny. He’s about to tell him everything when he realizes that, in doing so, he may give away Jinyoung’s part in all this––could Jinyoung’s digging into the case before they met get him in trouble? He wants to kick himself when he realizes that he cares. Jinyoung had lied to him, not once, but twice, and had hid from him maybe the most important truth about himself: that he knew about what was going on, that Yoojin had been looking for him, after all. Jaebum is confused and stricken when the betrayal hurts worse than burying his brother in the ground. 

Jaebum glances over, wondering if the hesitation gives him away, but there’s a look on Mark’s face that has Jaebum narrowing his one good eye. “You already know, don’t you?”

Mark pulls up and drops his shoulder nonchalantly, and it grates against Jaebum’s nerves. “I know some things. I want to hear it from you, though.”

He just sighs again. “Where do I start?”

“Wherever you want.” 

“Jinyoung...” Jaebum swallows, emotion building up in his throat. He clears it and tries again. “The day I found out about Yoojin, he was there. Jinyoung. I saw him in the crowd of all the reporters. He talked to that really shitty kid, remember? The one who said he would take me to court. And I remember thinking about how familiar Jinyoung looked but I couldn’t place why.”

So much comes back to him now––things that he hadn’t realized before, though he remembers them. Jinyoung looking so, so familiar; introducing himself and the name bringing back flashes of not him as a child, but of Taeyoung, instead, and the connection was missed entirely. The time Jinyoung had been angry in the press conference when he had asked a question that Jaebum had found irellevant but answered anyway––how could he not have seen it then? How did he become so blind? 

“He’s a good actor,” Jaebum says, voice more bitter than before when he answers his own internal question. “If he hadn’t been, I would have put it together sooner, I think. But he was so good at deflecting, or making me feel like he was sad to hear about Taeyoung. But he knew, that night we got drinks–” he chokes a bit. “He knew. And I let him in and we––”

Mark’s voice is horribly, achingly, soft. “I know.” 

Jaebum skips ahead a bit. “And it seemed like...it seemed like maybe I was finally ready to let someone in. I think, more accurately, he forced his way in but I let him. Subconsciously maybe I knew. And then one day I decided to check out the website of the paper that he said he worked for and he wasn’t anywhere on it. Not on the staff page, no articles by him anywhere. And I immediately knew something was wrong.” 

“Did you bother to call the paper?” 

Jaebum looks over in annoyance. “Of course I didn’t. We probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if I had.” 

Mark nods curtly. “Right.” 

“And so he came back to my apartment. I confronted him immediately and as soon as he started to panic I knew I’d caught him lying about something. I had thought he was just some shady underground reporter or maybe a criminal who was trying to get information out of me, but then he screamed  _ I’m Taeyoung’s brother  _ at me. And that was the big secret he’d been hiding.” 

“What do you know about how he was involved with Yoojin?” Mark asks, voice still soft even as Jaebum looks straight ahead at the closed bathroom door of his hospital room. His heart beats sluggishly, as though it’s finally too damaged to function properly. 

“Not very much. Or anything, really. All I know is what Woohyun said about Taeyoung’s brother calling Bae Junhong and saying that he knew what was going on. And then he almost killed me.” 

“But yet you seem like he’s completely betrayed you and you don’t know anything.” 

Jaebum turns his head, a spark igniting in his chest. He grinds his teeth together at the serene look on Mark’s face: it’s clear that he knows way more than he’s showing, and that feeling of once again being hindered makes the spark grow into a tiny flame. “How can you say that? He did betray me. First he hid who he really was from me, knowing the whole time who I was, and then hid from me that he knew anything about Yoojin. That’s betrayal.”

Mark just hums, and Jaebum’s fist tightens in anger. How can Mark be so calm about this? So relaxed? As though Jaebum’s whole life hadn’t just been flipped upside down time and time and time again in the mere span of weeks. 

“Mark––” 

The older man interrupts him as though he hadn’t even tried to say anything. “I think you should talk to him,” he says, voice calm, crossing one leg over his knee and readjusting in the chair. “He’s been calling after you since the minute we found you.” 

Jaebum hates the way his pulse beats in his ears at the thought of Jinyoung being terrified for him, calling everyone and anyone to get an update on him. “Really?” 

Mark just nods, dishwater blond hair flopping in his eyes before he pushes it away. 

“But he hasn’t come to see me.” It’s a question without the pain of swallowing his pride long enough to ask it. 

“Oh, he’s tried. Believe me, I’ve dragged him out the front doors more times than you can count.” 

His heartbeat is loud in his ears. “Why’d you make him leave?” 

“Because you need to think about what you’re going to say before you see him.”

Jaebum clicks his tongue against his teeth in annoyance. “Yah, we’re not fifteen...” 

“No,” Mark interrupts, and this time he stands. He smooths his hands down the thighs of his pants, cracking his knuckles before putting a hand on the bedrail at his side and leaning on it a bit. Mark looks down at him, expression serious. “But you are angry. And I know the kind of person you can be when you’re angry. You deserve a chance.”

This confuses him.  _ “I _ deserve a chance? A chance at what?” 

Mark pats the bed, mouth pulling up at the corner in a soft smile. “At happiness,” he says, before he turns away and leaves the room. 

  
  
  


By the time they let him go home a few days later, he hasn’t spoken to Jinyoung in over a week. Not that he’d been counting, of course; though ever since Mark had mentioned that Jinyoung had tried a hundred and one t imes to get into his hospital room, he hasn’t stopped thinking about him. Mark had been right: he needed the time to think about what he was going to say, but when it comes down to it, he doesn’t know if he’ll have the strength, after all.

The cuts on his face have mostly healed down to sore red lines, scabbed over and itchy. The bruises have faded to ugly shades of yellow, making the shadows underneath his eyes stand out with the sallow and gaunt nature of his face, and he makes sure to refrain from looking at his reflection in the window in the back of the taxi. He’s more tired than he thinks he’s ever been–as the cab takes him closer and closer to his apartment through the stop-and-go of downtown Seoul traffic, he wonders if maybe it’s time to retire. Jaebum wonders if he can even retire this early. 

He lets his mind wander as they drive, the neon of the city lights pinwheeling past his face in reds and blues and greens. It reminds him of the view off his balcony, watching the cars go down the highway, and he feels a certain sort of happiness at knowing that, in just a few minutes, he’ll be able to go outside on that exact same balcony and chain smoke until his lungs give out, if he so desires. He tries to avoid thinking about Jinyoung: he’s been thinking for days and days about what he’s going to say, and how, and what it means, but the words just fall apart and get lost in all the chaos. More than anything, he just wants to see something normal: after seeing only the inside of a dark room and coming so close to his death and then the blistering white of hospital walls for days on end, it comforts him to look out over the city and to do something mundane and normal. Ever a creature of habit, Jaebum thinks the excitement from the last couple of days is enough to last him a lifetime. 

The cab pulls up to the curb, and Jaebum is so preoccupied by trying to hand him the money for the fare and getting his bag out of the back that he doesn’t notice that there’s someone sitting on the steps to his apartment building. Jaebum drops the bag that Mark had brought him at the hospital, and he curses under his breath as he turns away from the cab to pick it up. His back doesn’t ache as much as he thought it would, but the cut across his chest pulls tightly when he bends and reaches his arm down to swipe his duffle bag up by the strap. The heavy sigh that was in process of leaving his chest when he stands up his cut short when he meets Jinyoung’s eyes where he’s folded up and leaned against the low wall of the stairs. 

“Hi,” he says meekly, voice so quiet Jaebum barely hears it. It’s only been days and it’s a testament to how fucking far he’s fallen that it feels like years. 

Jaebum nearly drops the bag again in surprise but tightens his grip on the strap until it’s almost painful. He wants to say  _ I’m so glad to see you  _ but what comes out is, “what are you doing here?” 

Jinyoung visibly deflates. Jaebum just stands at the edge of the sidewalk, watching the younger man across from him twist his hands nervously. His face is only illuminated by the dim orange of the street lamps in the fading sunlight, but even so Jaebum can see how pale he is. Part of him feels guilty, wants to pull him in and make it better, but the other savagely reminds him just how much Jinyoung has kept from him. Jaebum holds his ground, afraid that if he gets any closer, his own resolve will break. 

“We need to talk,” Jinyoung says, and it sounds like his heart is breaking. Jaebum grinds his teeth. 

“Yeah, I’ll say.”

Jinyoung sighs and closes his eyes, standing up when he does. Jaebum wonders absentmindedly if he’s been cold waiting out here in just his jeans and that same black peacoat from the first day they’d met cinched tightly at the waist, but pushes the thought away when Jinyoung takes a step down. He keeps one hand on the cement wall like he’s trying to hold himself back. Jaebum knows the feeling but doesn’t express it. Jinyoung comes all the way down the steps, stopping in front of the last one with his feet on the sidewalk but doesn’t come any closer. His voice, when he speaks, sounds ragged and tired.

“I’m serious, Jaebum. I have so much to say.” 

All the things that he’d been practicing how to say over the last few days leave him in a rush, and all he can manage is, “I bet.” 

Jinyoung steps closer, into the pool of light from the streetlamp. Now he can see it: Jinyoung’s dark eyes are watery, face washed out from the orange glow but colored patches staining his cheeks like he’d been crying. His hands are gripping the belt of his peacoat tightly, pulling it so hard Jaebum can see the expand and collapse of his thin chest as he takes deep, shuddering breaths. They’re standing maybe six feet apart but Jinyoung’s voice is so broken and soft that it feels like calling across canyons. The distance is horrible, palpable, and it only pushes the cold deeper inside his bones. 

“I know, you probably hate me, and you have every right to–” his voice hitches and it’s almost physically painful. “And I haven’t been honest. I haven’t been fair. And I won’t beg for a second chance–” he’s crying freely now, voice breaking, and Jaebum has to grip the strap of his bag tightly to keep his emotions off his face. Jinyoung hesitates before dropping his hands down to his sides, looking defeated. “Just let me explain.” 

“What if I don’t want to hear it?” it’s not exactly what he’d meant to say, but he doesn’t take it back. His voice sounds distant and cold to his own ears, and he continues to struggle with keeping his face neutral even as Jinyoung’s nose scrunches up to fight back tears. In all his years, he doesn’t think he’s ever had to fight against his own feelings this hard; nothing was ever this hard for him. His mother’s death was easy––he cried, and learned to live with it. Taeyoung’s death was easy––it ruined him, and he learned to live with it. Yoojin’s death was easy, too, in it's way: he learned that trust is a fragile, precious thing, and that secrets hide in the corners of every smile. Flings are easy; he gets off and then they go. But this? Jinyoung is the recurring nightmare he never wants to stop having and he doesn’t know what it means. 

“Then you don’t want to hear it,” Jinyoung says, and the resignation is loud and clear in his voice. “But just tell me honestly that you don’t, and I’ll go.”

So it comes down to this: the two of them standing mere feet away from each other on the cold Seoul sidewalk outside of Jaebum’s apartment building, Jinyoung in tears and Jaebum damn near close. Their eye contact is heavy, intense, silence like a loaded gun and Jaebum’s got a hair trigger; but they can’t look away from each other, Jinyoung biting his lip and his eyes watering from the anxiety or the wind, or both. Jaebum’s throat works as he tries to say  _ I don’t want to hear it  _ but it catches and hardens in his throat like cement. Jinyoung trembles violently while he waits, body tense like he’s going to run as soon as Jaebum decides to pull the trigger.

He takes a deep breath, adjusting his grip on his duffle bag as he closes his eyes for a moment and prepares himself to speak.

_ Ready. _

“Jinyoung––” The words catch; won’t come out.

_ Aim. _

“I just––” Six more words and he can end it right here.

_ Fire. _

His chest heaves with a sigh. “Come inside.”

The pure relief that floods Jinyoung’s face illuminated by that sickly orange glow burns itself against the back of his eyelids and he sees it every time he closes his eyes. 

  
  
  


They stand shoulder to shoulder in the elevator, but neither of them talk and they keep their gazes straight ahead. Jaebum steals glances at him in the reflection of the doors across from them, but Jinyoung’s eyes are set straight and he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t acknowledge it. His duffle bag bumps against his leg where Jinyoung keeps adjusting it nervously––after Jaebum had invited him inside, he’d furiously wiped the tears from his face and insisted that he carry it for him. He’d been too surprised to say no, and his hand still tingles from where Jinyoung’s fingers had brushed the back of it when he’d reached out to take it. 

From the corner of his eye, Jaebum can see the way Jinyoung’s eyes continue to water and how he blinks quickly to push them back, throat working like he’s trying not to say something. They’re only a few floors down when finally, like much needed rain in a dry summer, the silence breaks. 

“Jaebum, I’m so sorry.” Jinyoung turns his head, and they’re alarmingly close: the elevator in his apartment isn’t large, but it isn’t small, either, and they could have stood at opposite walls and been too far to touch each other. But here they are, in the middle of the elevator floor, and he can count the ceiling tiles where they’re reflected in the shining of Jinyoung’s dark eyes. His mind screams for him to take a step back, but the agony (and maybe something else) in Jinyoung’s voice keeps him rooted to the spot. “I’m so sorry, I’m––”

They aren’t even off the elevator yet and he’s not ready. “Don’t,” he warns quietly, voice less cold than it had been when Jaebum had first seen him, edging on a shake. But he swallows it down. “Not yet. Please.” 

Here is the fundamental change that Jinyoung had been the catalyst of:  _ Please.  _ Jaebum isn’t a beggar. He’s polite, yes, but he doesn’t beg. No lover or relationship (except perhaps Taeyoung, but that life is over, dead and buried) ever brought him to the place where he felt like he would fight with his head underwater just to catch a breath, but Park Jinyoung looks at him like his heart is going to disintegrate and all Jaebum can think to say is  _ please. Please. Please.  _ Even after the secrets and the lies Jaebum can only think of how badly he wants to hear him out, and hope that it makes it better and not worse. And that, if anything, is the irrefutable proof that this life has changed him. 

The elevator dings quietly when it arrives at his floor, and the soft parting of the doors makes him feel like his lungs can finally expand. He takes a deep breath and steps out, heading down the plush hallway to his apartment without turning to see if Jinyoung is behind him. But over the course of the last few weeks he’s grown accustomed to the presence Jinyoung has and he can feel the younger man hovering just behind his shoulder as he unlocks the door. Eyes closed, breath held, he undoes the lock and pushes the door open to let them inside. 

Both of them shed their coats by the door and remove their shoes as Jaebum flips on the kitchen light. It feels so domestic, the two of them seeming like they’ve just gotten off work and are going to settle in the for the night, and it makes him feel a bit sick that it couldn’t be further from what’s really happening. The tension between them is almost physical, a living thing pushing two hands against Jaebum’s throat until the corners of his vision starts to go gray. Jinyoung’s hands are visibly shaking as he readjusts the collar of his shirt, turned away from him as Jaebum goes to the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

“Do you want one?” he asks, looking over his shoulder to see Jinyoung in the living room now, staring down at the coffee table with his hands cradling his elbows. There’s nothing interesting on it: just the usual magazines and couple of books he’s pretended to read on multiple occasions. Jinyoung doesn’t seem to hear him, so he moves to the edge of the bar and asks again, “Jinyoung-ah, do you want water?”

He finally seems to hear him, and he tries to discreetly wipe his eyes before turning and nodding his head. “Yeah. Sure, please.” 

Jaebum just hands him the glass he’d poured for himself and doesn’t bother to get himself another. He looks away from Jinyoung as he goes around the low coffee table to sit on the smaller sofa situated across from the large one. Normally the softness of the cushions would comfort him, but there’s no comfort to be afforded by anything tonight, it seems, and so he just watches as Jinyoung greedily downs the water and hesitates before sitting down across from him. The glass he’d been drinking from almost misses the table when Jinyoung sets it down, and it startles a bitter laugh out of Jinyoung as he jerks forward to catch it.

“Sorry,” he says, voice awfully devoid of the usual warmth it contains. He pushes the cup onto the table and then settles into the couch, arms still wrapped around his middle like he’s trying to physically hold himself together. Their staring contest begins again: the heaviness in the room pushes down harder, so tense Jaebum feels like he’d shatter like glass at the smallest touch. He’s waiting for Jinyoung to say something, anything; the younger man across from him is just watching him with a sick look on his face and his bottom lip pulled anxiously between his teeth. Jaebum has made a million promises to never use his interrogation techniques on someone he loves, but tonight he thinks he can make an exception, and he cautiously watches Jinyoung’s movements for any hint of a lie. 

Finally, after five solid minutes of silence, Jinyoung takes a deep, shaking breath. “Jaebum...” 

It makes his heart hurt, but he folds his hands in his lap and keeps his face clear. “Get on with it.” 

Jinyoung swallows. “Where do you want me to start?” 

Mark’s voice comes back to him, then: 

_ Mark pulls up and drops his shoulder nonchalantly, and it grates against Jaebum’s nerves. “I know some things. I want to hear it from you, though.” _

_ He just sighs again. “Where do I start?”  _

_ “Wherever you want.”  _

And Jaebum clears his throat, steeling himself and ready to fall for the last time. “Wherever you want.”

Across from him, Jinyoung’s dark eyes shutter closed for the briefest of moments, but then he opens them again with all emotion locked behind them. “I guess it started the day Taeyoung brought you home.

“I knew that my brother loved you. It was hard not to,” Jinyoung laughs quietly, a sad smile pulling up the side of his mouth before it drops again. “You had been friends for a long time before he fell in love with you, but... it wasn’t that way for me. Taeyoung didn’t know he liked boys until he was twelve. But I had always known. About myself, I mean. I never told anyone but him because it didn’t seem to matter: I was too young to date at the time, anyway, and by the time I was old enough to start wanting to date, you’d showed up, stolen my brother’s heart and taken my desire to date anyone else with you.” 

There must be a look on his face, because Jinyoung sighs and squeezes his elbows. “I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable for you. I know you were too old for me at the time. But you wanted the truth, right?” His eyes are wide, red rimmed, wet with held-back tears. “You want the truth.”

His whole body feels numb at the confession, so many years in the making. All he can do is nod. “Yes.” 

“So, Taeyoung fell for you, and you for him. And I let go of it. I knew, really, that I still loved you. It’s like one of those cheesy dramas, isn’t it? Being in love with the same person since you were young.” Jinyoung sighs and rubs one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Anyway. After Yoojin found out about the two of you, so much changed between them. I could see it. I knew you could see it, too, but you were pretty blindly loyal to Yoojin. And that’s alright,” he says, when he notices Jaebum tense like he’s about to get defensive (Jinyoung really does know him well, it seems, and his chest contracts). “That’s friendship. But I saw the change in him, how dark he was on the inside about the two of you. I was young, and I didn’t know where it was coming from. I still don’t. 

“The night Taeyoung died... was the worst night of my life. My brother was everything to me. I don’t know that he ever really knew the extent of my feelings for you, but he knew I had a crush and would tease me about it constantly. Would try to get me to talk to you, even though he knew you were too old and he was too crazy about you. But he was just that kind of brother, you know?” Jinyoung sniffles, tears welling up in his eyes, and he wipes at them with the sleeve of his shirt before continuing. Jaebum wants so badly to comfort him––Taeyoung’s death is that grief that they still share, will share forever regardless of the outcome between them, and he wants so badly to hold him close. But he grits his teeth and lets him continue,

“That night at the hospital, after Yoojin had showed up at your house and the ambulance had been called and we all showed up, Yoojin and I were alone in the room with Taeyoung’s body, after they’d dragged you out and my family had gone to talk to the doctor. He turned to me, and he said, ‘Jinyoung-ah,’ and he still had my brothers blood all down the front of his shirt, on his hands, and he tried to touch me. I backed away, and  the look in his eyes was pleading. ‘ _ Jinyoung-ah, it was an accident. _ ’ And I remember being so confused––of course it was an accident. He hadn’t purposefully driven the car into the tree. Taeyoung was infamous for never wearing a seatbelt. I had been about to say something when Yoojin had dropped to his knees in front of me, gripping the bottom of my shirt. _ ‘I didn’t mean to, Jinyoung-ah,’  _ he said to me, and the look in his eyes was crazy. I was so scared, and he wouldn’t let go of me, and I almost started to scream when he tugged on my shirt. But then he said,  _ ‘It was an accident. He wasn’t supposed to die.’ _ My family came in just then and pulled him off of me, and then we went home.” 

Jaebum’s chest is so tight it hurts to breathe. His fingertips dig into the meat of his stomach where his hands are resting, trying to find his balance, trying to center himself with the pain. “You knew?” he hates how breathless he sounds. “You knew, since that night, you knew?” 

Jinyoung looks at him sadly. “Of course I didn’t know. If I had known, none of this would have happened. This life would be so different.” 

“But––” the room spins a bit, and he struggles to stay calm. “He said ‘he wasn’t supposed to die’. He confessed to you, right there.”

“How should I have known?” Jinyoung says, leaning forward, voice raising an octave pleadingly, begging Jaebum to understand without words. “I was barely thirteen at the time, Jaebum. People say things when they’re grieving.”

Jaebum’s voice shakes. “I know, but––”

Jinyoung cuts him off, face flushing with the first hint of anger. “And he was right. Yoojin.” 

“About  _ what?”  _

Jinyoung hesitates, pulling his bottom lip in between his perfect teeth and biting down on it hard, enough that Jaebum twitches like he’s going to leap across the table and touch him. His voice, when he responds, no longer shakes, but it’s heavy with the grief of thirteen years. 

“He  _ wasn’t  _ supposed to die.” 

Jaebum’s breath leaves him in a rush, and he sits back heavily against the couch as another silence descends upon the room. “Jinyoung, I––” 

The younger man waves it off, running a shaky hand through his hair. “It’s not important. It’s been a long time. But after that night, I just knew something wasn’t right. Not with him. He didn’t grieve for long––”

“People grieve differently, Jinyoung-ah,” he interrupts, and his heart breaks a little when Jinyoung flinches at the nickname. 

“But his was  _ too  _ different. I was young when he died, but I wasn’t stupid.”

Jaebum sighs. After so much lost time, so many memories of Park Taeyoung’s handsome little brother came back to him, though they were mostly shrouded with the darkness of his death. “You’ve never been stupid.”

He’s awarded a small smile that leaves as quickly as it comes. “In some ways. But after Taeyoung died, it just wasn’t the same. He wouldn’t look at me in the eyes anymore, and after the funeral he never came to see the family ever again. And then the two of you became police officers, and my family decide that it was time to move back to Changwon. I was sixteen.

“A couple of years passed, but I never forgot about you. Or Yoojin, really, but I was more concerned about you. I’d read the paper sometimes, from Seoul, just to see what was going on in the area and if maybe the two of you were doing alright; there was never really much. But then the story broke the day Yoojin went crazy and almost killed you in the police station. I read the article a hundred times, looking for anything, something that might tip me off to what happened. And then I realized, that the paper mentioned Yoojin’s statement––that he’d gotten something in the mail at the station but he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what it was. But at that point, I was graduating high school and on my way to university in Busan and I was going to be a reporter. So I used my connections to call the station, and I asked what it was exactly that Yoojin had gotten that had scared him so badly he would beat up his partner and then burn it.”

Jaebum’s heart is slamming against his ribs now. The truth, finally, about just how deep Jinyoung’s involvement goes. He wonders how much this is going to change things. It occurs to him that, for the first time in years, he is afraid.

“And they told me, ‘it was a photograph of a body. But he wouldn’t say who.’ and that was the end of it,” he says, and he shrugs on a little sigh. “The police wouldn’t tell me anything else, and I’d hit a bit of a dead end, anyway. So I stopped looking into it.” 

“That’s it?”

“No,” Jinyoung says, eyes closing. “For the next four years I let that phone call with the station stew, just waiting, but I never investigated it. Never needed to, I thought, it was open and closed. Someone sent him a picture of a body and it scared him so bad that he went crazy and beat you up. We all thought there was something wrong with him anyway. Sorry,” Jinyoung says softly when he notices Jaebum flinch. He nods at Jinyoung to continue. “But then I heard his sentence was over and he had gotten out of jail. I thought that I could find him and ask him about it, just to see what he had to say. Turns out he’s nearly impossible to track.” 

Jaebum’s eyebrows raise. “He was hard to track? He was an ex-cop who was plastered all over the news. It couldn’t have been that hard.” 

“Don’t be naive,” Jinyoung says, and the implication frustrates him but he lets it go in favor of Jinyoung actually being honest with him. “He was an ex-cop with a violent history and no one wanted to give him a job on the books or rent to him, so his location was always word of mouth. Two years of searching and then I just gave up.” 

“You spent so long looking for him and then you just gave up?” 

Jinyoung’s face flushes, and Jaebum feels a little guilty for being antagonistic, but God, if he doesn’t want to hear how this story ends already. “Yes. But then he showed up at our door and I didn’t have to search anymore.

“It was about a year ago, now. He went to Dangjin more recently, but it was about a year ago when he showed up at our front door. Yoojin looked ragged. Mostly okay, clean, but ragged. So much older than he actually was. And that day he showed up, he told us what really happened that night with Taeyoung. He told my parents and I how jealous he’d been of the two of you, so happy together. Not sexually, he didn’t feel that way. But just in general, he felt like my brother had stolen you from him and he hated him for that. So he was hanging around that guy who used to lurk in the parking lot of the high school, remember? That was Bae Woohyun. Yoojin started to hang around the guy and asked him how to fight, because he wanted to kick the shit out of my brother in hopes that he’d back off.” Jinyoung’s face changes, darkening, and his voice is bitter and ugly. “But the fighting just made him crazier. The night he met my brother out by the river, he brought Woohyun with him, but kept him down by the bank so that Taeyoung wouldn’t see him. And––” his breath hitches. It sounds so painful. “He told me...how...he started to hit my brother...” 

Jaebum scoots to the edge of his seat, wanting to comfort Jinyoung as the tears fall down his face, but he isn’t sure how, isn’t sure what’s right. “Jinyoung-ah––”

“Let me tell it,” Jinyoung says breathlessly, inhaling sharply and rubbing his eyes. “Just let me tell it.  _ Please _ . You need to hear it all.” 

“I’ve already heard this part––”

Jinyoung slams a hand down on the coffee table and the glass rattles so loudly it shocks them both into silence. “You need to hear it again.”

“Why?” his own voice small. 

“Because,” Jinyoung says, and, most desperately of all, “I need you to believe me.” 

Jaebum looks into his eyes and sees the layers and layers of agony like the folds of a forgotten sweater and he thinks that, no matter what follows, he will believe Jinyoung and believe it until he takes his last breath. The thing of it is that he _does_ believe Jinyoung: too much of his story matches what Woohyun had told him when he'd been tied to the chair and almost killed him for it not to be true, but it means something to have Jinyoung sit here and spill his guts like this. To finally come clean, no holds barred, telling Jaebum _everything_ that he'd kept hidden when they'd first met for a second time. A paradox of comforting and uncomfortable, but it makes a certain kind of relief start to edge in around his chest. He just takes a deep breath and says, “okay.” 

“He was hitting Taeyoung and then he finally drew back and hit him in the jaw so hard it broke his neck. Tae had dropped and hadn’t moved, so he started to scream, and Woohyun came running up the bank and Yoojin begged him to make it look like an accident. So Woohyun told him to get his car and to drive it as fast he could around the corner and to jump out of it, and then the rest was just making it look like they’d crashed the car. You know the rest from there.” 

“He didn’t tell you about the station? Why he went crazy?” 

Jinyoung shakes his head sadly and God, if the pain on his face isn’t making Jaebum want to die. He hates how far he’s fallen, so willing to listen to all of this and take it as gospel. “He didn’t mention it. He just said he’s sorry for what happened. What he did. And that if he could take it back, he would have seen a therapist. Or tried to talk to someone. My parents wanted to press charges but I convinced them not to. What would be the point? Tae is dead, and had been dead for years at that point. Yoojin told us that he was going to see his grandparents in Dangjin before going to Seoul to find you even though he wasn’t supposed to.”

“What about the phone call you made to Bae Junhong?” This––this is the answer he really needs, and he watches Jinyoung shift, waiting for any tell that he’s lying. 

“A dead end. After Yoojin had visited and told us about Bae Woohyun, I tried to find him and couldn’t. My next best guess was his cousin, because he was in the same year as the three of you and I knew that he’d know who you were. So I got a hold of Junhong and told him that I was Taeyoung’s brother and that I knew what they’d done, but he just laughed at me and hung up. The next time I tried to call, the line was disconnected, and everyone in the neighborhood where I suspected that he lived was covering for him.

“So that was a bust. I didn’t get any real information, and there was no way to turn Woohyun in without knowing anything. And it all just gave me a bad feeling––Yoojin never mentioned the letter he’d gotten, but knowing Woohyun had been there that night, I knew it had to be some kind of blackmail. And I just knew something was going to happen, so I started packing to come to Seoul to find him. To try and warn him, or to help him, I don’t know. I got a temporary, unpaid position at the Seoul Crime Report before I got there, but by the time I arrived a couple of months ago, I knew I’d been too late. Yoojin had been impossible to find when I got here, and then he ended up dead. So I came to find you, instead. And when I saw you that day in the police station, I recognized you. You’d gotten so handsome. And I thought you were going to recognize me, the way you were staring at me so hard, but then you looked away and I realized that you hadn’t. So I kept my mouth shut about who I was in case that was going to put you in danger. Whoever hurt Yoojin knew that I knew, because of Junhong, and I didn’t want to risk you. So I tried to keep my distance, but I was drawn to you like I always have been. And you’re so much rougher than you were, then. Sharp edged, like you’re trying to keep everyone away from you. But I knew how to get around that. And now...” he takes a shaky breath. “Yeah. Now we’re here.” 

It’s quiet in the room, then, and Jinyoung is seemingly finished. “Is that all?” 

Jinyoung gets up, coming over to sit beside him on the small couch, hands out like he wants to touch him but he draws them uncomfortably back in his lap as he sits. Their knees are close, but not touching, and Jinyoung glances at them before looking up into Jaebum’s eyes. “That’s all. At least for me.” 

Jaebum’s having a hard time looking at his face, so he stares at his throat instead; thinks of the times he’s gotten his teeth against it, how badly he wanted to rip it out when they’d first met, how he’d wanted to rip it out while they fucked in order to get inside him deeper, to exist within him. Jinyoung finally moves, gently putting a hand on Jaebum’s bicep and god, it feels so good, like a cold glass of water on a hot day, but he’s so afraid to move and break this that he just goes still. 

And now, he’s gotten what he’s wanted since Jinyoung admitted to being Taeyoung’s brother: the truth. All of it, every ugly last bit of it. The overall picture he pieces together from his own experience, and Jinyoung’s, and Woohyun’s story is ugly and dark. Accidental murder and the chaos that followed because of a messed up teenager and an equally (if not more so) messed up adult who blackmailed him into going to jail for something that could have been deemed an accident had they just  _ called the ambulance.  _ But there’s a fundamental truth that he understands now, too: Yoojin wasn’t the person that he thought he was. That is the truth he has struggled with for years on end; it never made any sense to him, how he could have been someone else. But that is the revelation that he has now, with all the parts finally in place. That no one is ever what they seem until you cut them open and peer down into the very center of them, but even then there are the deepest secrets in the corner of every heart. 

And this is what he understands about Jinyoung, too: he’s afraid. He’s always been afraid. Afraid to take Jaebum away from his brother, and then his brother was dead, and Jaebum removed himself from their lives so much that Jaebum didn’t even recognize him, even when Jinyoung had given him his real name. He was afraid that something had happened to his brother that was never said, something hidden, and he was afraid that Jaebum would turn him away at even the first suggestion that Yoojin had done something unforgivable. He was afraid that he’d never get the chance to know him the way that Taeyoung did. And with the way Jinyoung is squeezing his arm right now, he can tell that he is still afraid, that Jaebum won’t believe him. Won’t forgive him. 

But he’d be wrong. 

“Jaebum...” 

Jaebum turns quickly, one hand grabbing Jinyoung’s wrist. Jinyoung inhales sharply through his nose, a close-mouthed gasp. Jaebum looks up into his eyes, heart beating in his ears, wondering how his life could have gotten so insane, could have turned itself upside down like this so many times. 

“Do you love me?” 

Jinyoung jerks back in surprise, but Jaebum keeps his hold on his wrist.  _ “What?”  _

He asks again, voice soft but shaking. “Do you love me?” 

This is the question that matters more than anything: does Jinyoung love him? He says he does, and that he has since they were younger, but does that hold true still? He has to know.

A thousand emotions seem to flicker across Jinyoung’s face at the question, at the viciousness in which Jaebum has asked him  _ Do you love me?  _ Like the answer is life and death. The longer the silence stretches, the louder his heart shatters against his eardrums and he thinks that even though he’s survived three deaths, a kidnapping, and almost the death of himself, he does not know if he’d survive Jinyoung saying  _ No.  _ Jaebum has spent years being angry, being alone, being cold. He has spent years keeping a distance between himself and anyone who tries to get close because everyone who has ever loved him has been taken from him. Jaebum isn’t a beggar, and he’s not exactly warm, but if being a detective has taught him anything it’s that he doesn’t give up when shit hits the fan. 

Jinyoung’s mouth opens. “I––”

“Just tell me honestly,” Jaebum says, voice on the edge of sounding desperate. 

All the air sucked from the room when Jinyoung sags a bit, face softening, his wrist twisting in Jaebum’s hand so that he can gently grip his forearm. Jaebum’s heart is beating a thousand miles an hour, so loud he’s afraid he’s going to miss Jinyoung’s answer. Jinyoung’s fingers tighten on his forearm and then he sighs. 

“Yeah. Yeah, Jaebum. I love you.” 

There’s barely a pause the length of a heartbeat before Jaebum is reaching out to grab Jinyoung’s face and then he’s kissing him. Jinyoung makes a noise of surprise but he melts under the touch, fingers around Jaebum’s wrists and squeezing, giving into his mouth. Jaebum shudders a broken, relieved laugh against Jinyoung’s lips and Jinyoung just smiles underneath it, kissing back like it’s the first and last time. 

What it comes down to is this: Jaebum has lived a life of rigidity, always believing that the best things in life are taken from you before you can truly find the time to appreciate them. He lived a life distanced from the people he cares about, afraid that whatever higher power (or lack thereof) would see that he loved them and would take them, too. Despite his gruffness, they have stayed by him, and he took for granted the forgiveness that was offered to him daily by the people he constantly held at arm’s length. But what Jaebum has come to understand about this life is that belief is individualized, and that one tragedy does not equal another, and that forgiveness is always possible, even though it may be hard. 

Love isn’t something he expected to find, and one so complicated and filled with secrets and lies and heartache is something that his old self would have abandoned. But inside of him there is the untapped potential for a softness that no one had ever felt deserving of until now. The road is long and full of obstacles, and Jaebum knows that forgiveness does not equal happiness, but he thinks they at least have somewhere to start. And with Jinyoung laughing through his tears as Jaebum kisses and bites at his mouth, sighing under his touch as Jaebum lifts off his shirt, he thinks that maybe he  _ did  _ catch the bad guy, save the city,  _ and  _ get the guy. That all of the tragedy he has had to wade through has given him the necessary tool he needs to survive and has led him here, to this moment. 

Jaebum pulls away, his own shirt coming up and off over his head, Jinyoung’s face radiant with relief and then Jaebum is kissing him again, breath fast and words spilling out against his lips:

“Then I believe you. I believe you.” 

_

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note**
> 
> If you made it all the way to the end of this, thank you so much. I'm still really nervous about posting this;; but it's something I worked really hard on and always had people cheering me on along the way, and I kind of just took the jump and did it. I put a ton of thought into this so hopefully all the plots connected, and I hope that there were enough warnings in the tags; I tried to get everything (especially the graphic violence and gore). I hope that it was enjoyable even though it's plot heavy and full of angst;; I'm sorry! But yeah, if you made it to the end, just know that I really appreciate the support and I do hope that, if you stuck it all the way out, you enjoyed the ride. If you got invested enough (lol) you can always come chat with me, and maybe share any theories you had while you were reading at my [ask.fm](http://www.ask.fm/jinyoongs). 
> 
> Thank you for your love and support! It means the world to me!  
> ♡  
> foxxing aka joey


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